Vivian Maier was an amateur photographer whose perceptive eye revealed her profound understanding of the human condition. Her artistry captured the hearts of aficionados and casual viewers alike when her images were discovered in 2007 in a storage locker auction.

In 2020, the Chicago History Museum acquired a Vivian Maier photography collection of around 1,800 color negatives and transparencies, spanning from c. 1954 to 1974. The early portion of the collection includes scenes from New York where Maier lived before moving to Chicago in 1956. The remainder of the collection features scenes from Chicago, its suburbs, and Maier’s world travels in 1959.

See more of Maier’s work in this Google Arts & Culture story.

Explore CHM’s Vivian Maier collection.

Read a conversation in Chicago History magazine between Vivian Maier: In Color curator Frances Dorenbaum and Jeffrey Goldstein, who donated a portion of his Vivian Maier images to the Museum.