Curated by Courtney Graham Donnell

There’s obsessive, and then there’s obsessive. Ivan Albright fell into the latter camp, carrying the behavior to heights rare even in the eccentric—friendly art world. The artist could spend an entire day working on a single square inch of his hyperrealistic American grotesques; paintings (in a similar vein) could take up to twenty years to complete. Associate curator Courtney Graham Donnell has assembled a lifetime’s worth of Albright’s hard work for the ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO—more than 120 gouaches, watercolors, works on paper, and small—scale sculptures—as well as the painting Picture of Dorian Gray, produced for the MGM movie of the same name. A comprehensive catalogue will accompany the show. Art Institute of Chicago, 2/20–5/11; travels (in a smaller version) to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 6/9–9/7.

— Mark Van de Walle