A visitor examines Gustave Caillebotte's famous "Paris Street; Rainy Day" impressionist painting at the Art Institute of Chicago's new exhibition "Gustave Caillebotte: Painting His World" on July 24, 2025. Since the Art Institute acquired this masterpiece in 1964, Caillebotte's "Paris Street; Rainy Day" has become virtually synonymous with the museum itself. The painting gained widespread recognition through its appearance in the movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and the Parker Brothers board game "Masterpiece." For visitors entering through the Michigan Avenue entrance and climbing the stairs to the Impressionism gallery, this iconic work is often their first encounter, offering a transition from one urban scene to another.

For the first time ever, the museum is displaying Caillebotte's preparatory sketches for "Paris Street; Rainy Day" as part of "Gustave Caillebotte: Painting His World," a comprehensive survey exhibition co-curated by the Art Institute alongside the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. In his surviving sketch of the central couple, only the male figure is rendered with any detail, while the woman attached to his arm appears as merely a woman-shaped void.

Two distinctive characteristics set Caillebotte (1848-1894) apart from his Impressionist contemporaries. First, he possessed extraordinary wealth as the son of a textile manufacturer. Second, he predominantly focused his artistic attention on depicting men – men strolling through his Paris neighborhood streets, men with whom he played cards, men he employed as contractors on his family estate, and men drying themselves after bathing, as seen in one 1884 painting considered so provocative that it was deliberately displayed in a remote corner of a Brussels gallery upon completion.

Gloria Groom, exhibition co-curator and the Art Institute's chair of European painting and sculpture, explains that she cannot think of any other artist from that period who shared Caillebotte's particular interest in painting working-class men, such as those featured in his "Floor Scrapers" series. "That's what makes him so distinct from his fellow Impressionists: his comfortableness in the social position that he was born into," Groom said. "He's a distinct artist; he has a very distinct way of showing his world."

Recently, some critics have accused the Art Institute of sanitizing that world. Over the past year, this same exhibition appeared at the Musée d'Orsay and the Getty under the title "Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men." The fact that the Art Institute alone chose a different title has prompted accusations of queer erasure, reflecting broader concerns about institutional self-censorship.

Jonathan Katz, lead curator of "The First Homosexuals" at Wrightwood 659, draws parallels between the current Caillebotte controversy and a 2022 incident involving the Art Institute's modification of placard text. The work in question, Félix González-Torres' "Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)," was named after González-Torres' partner Ross Laycock. The original placard noted that Laycock died of AIDS in 1991, the year the artwork was created. The Art Institute's revised placard, which was quickly replaced following public outcry, had completely removed any mention of Laycock.

"I'm always struck by the way this institution not only seems to be pathologically tied to a 1950s mindset, but moreover, doesn't learn from its own missteps," Katz said. Katz and his husband, fellow art scholar André Dombrowski, were invited to contribute an essay to the exhibition catalog – also titled "Painting Men" – examining Caillebotte's work through a queer perspective.

During a recent walkthrough of the exhibition with reporters, Katz expressed his feeling that those contributions had been significantly toned down compared to the exhibition's first presentation at the Musée d'Orsay, where "Painting Men" had generated conservative backlash. In response, he noted, the Musée d'Orsay organized a conference inviting scholars to submit papers presenting competing viewpoints on the question of Caillebotte's sexuality. "It was a model of curatorial transparency," Katz said. "That is not what this institution has ever done."

Johnny Willis, Katz's associate curator on "The First Homosexuals," directly confronted Groom about the exhibition's downplaying of queerness during an Art Institute Q&A session in June. Groom declined to address Willis's concerns at length, stating that changing exhibition titles was common practice and that she would not speculate about something painted 140 years ago.

The following week, a letter to the editor appeared objecting to Groom's response to Willis and to the Art Institute's title choice. "It's disappointing to see the Art Institute – once a beacon for cultural leadership – kowtow to imagined donor discomfort or a conservative fear of thought-provoking conversation," wrote attorney Matthew Richard Rudolphi.

In response to these criticisms, Groom and a museum spokesperson provided additional context regarding the title change. According to their account, the Art Institute finalized the "Painting His World" title nearly two years ago, based on feedback from a patron focus group that considered both that title and "Painting Men" as options. The museum declined to provide materials from that audience survey, citing proprietary concerns.

However, both Groom and the museum spokesperson, who reviewed the feedback, reported that patrons overwhelmingly associated Caillebotte with "Paris Street; Rainy Day," which prominently features a heterosexual couple. "The main thrust of the response was that 'Painting Men' was not what they think of, and it seemed limited when his work is not limited to just painting men," Groom explained.

Megan Michienzi, the museum spokesperson, noted that the Art Institute typically conducts such title testing for major exhibitions. For example, they tested titles for 2023's "Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde: The Modern Landscape" and the upcoming "Bruce Goff: Material Worlds," opening in December. "While we do not consider title testing to be definitive, it is directional in helping us determine what resonates with audiences," Michienzi said.

Just as exhibition titles sometimes change between host institutions – "Myth and Marble," for example, became "The Torlonia Collection: Masterpieces of Roman Sculpture" at the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts – Groom explained that it's standard museum practice for institutions to write their own exhibition texts, even for co-produced exhibitions. This meant she and her team started from scratch rather than working from the Musée d'Orsay's or Getty's wall texts, though she acknowledged being "definitely aware of what was written in both."

"I would never presume to copy someone else's text," she said. "We all know our audiences – ours and Paris are quite different; Getty's is different."

The "Painting His World" wall texts follow the general approach promised by the title, breaking with the more frank discussion of gender and sexuality presented at the Musée d'Orsay and Getty. "Painting His World" views Caillebotte's homosociality as one interpretive framework among many – including class, leisure, urbanity, and family.

Neither the d'Orsay nor the Getty assert definitively that Caillebotte was gay or bisexual, noting, as does the Art Institute, that he had a live-in female companion. However, little is known about her: Caillebotte rarely painted her, and census records refer to her only as Caillebotte's "amie," or friend. By emphasizing his work's provocativeness and occasional sensuality, both European institutions go further than the Art Institute in acknowledging possibilities.

To Katz, the Art Institute's approach results in missed insights. Class tension is discussed in the room containing Caillebotte's famous "Floor Scrapers" – where workers' muscles ripple and their skin glistens like the floor's varnish. However, he believes the Art Institute's wall texts leave too much unspoken.

"While French law permitted homosexuality, it did not permit any form of public solicitation," Katz explained. "If you were a man of a certain social class, you had a network of others who could provide entertainment for you that didn't entail public exposure. We wouldn't expect to find any kind of smoking gun there, because class protected them."

Elsewhere, the Art Institute's curatorial approach appeared more evasive. Most exhibition rooms flow sequentially – visitors can only access each room via the previous one, predetermining their progression through the galleries. Unlike the Getty and Musée d'Orsay versions, the gallery containing portraits and nudes, where Caillebotte's sexuality is pointedly addressed for the first and only time, stands as an exception, sequestered in an area visitors can bypass completely if they choose.

Groom explained that placing the three nudes in this gallery-within-a-gallery – featuring two men and one woman – was intended to evoke greater intimacy, "as though we ourselves were entering the privacy of the subjects' quarters." In a clear departure from 19th-century squeamishness surrounding "Man at His Bath," the subject is positioned so his buttocks confront viewers from yards away. "They could beckon you into that section – or they could drive you away," Katz observed. "At the same time they deny an erotic reading, they enforce a kind of erotic reading by creating a strip show in the middle of the exhibition."

Near "Man at His Bath" hangs "Self-Portrait at the Easel" (1879-80), one of four self-portraits in the exhibition. Despite its name, this painting does not depict Caillebotte alone. Behind him is another man lounging on a couch. Though the man's features are indistinct, he's lazily reading a newspaper, leading scholars to identify him as Richard Gallo, a journalist in Caillebotte's wealthy bachelor circle.

Gallo appears as one of the most frequently identifiable subjects in Caillebotte's paintings, appearing in six other pieces in "Painting His World" alone. However, the Art Institute placard doesn't acknowledge Gallo's presence in the self-portrait. Instead, it cites artwork hanging behind Gallo – Renoir's "Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette" – as a launching point to discuss Caillebotte's vast art collection, which eventually formed the basis for the Musée d'Orsay.

When questioned about this omission, Groom suggested that visitors should consult the catalog – which acknowledges Gallo's significance early in the introduction – if curious about the second figure. "You can only have 120 words in a label, and you have to determine what is most essential. And that was the time when we could talk about Caillebotte the collector," she explained.

Katz rejects this explanation. "Nobody is asking Gloria or any art historian to speak definitively about anything here. We can't," he said. "What we can do is problematize, ask, point out and let viewers draw their own conclusion. What we don't want is the institution to mediate for us in a single voice."

This raises questions about how light a curatorial touch is too light. During one visit to the exhibition, a family concluded after reading the introductory text that Caillebotte must have been a misogynist. On the same visit, a couple searched the gift shop for the exhibition catalog; after finding a book titled "Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men" but not "Gustave Caillebotte: Painting His World," they left empty-handed and confused.

While revisiting the portraits and nudes section with Katz, visitors could be overheard engaging in playful banter with a security guard about finding the exhibition's "adult section." Moments after turning off the recorder during the walkthrough with Katz, a young visitor in their twenties, overhearing the conversation, timidly approached and asked whether Caillebotte was queer.

As Katz and others would argue, the specific answer isn't the point. Being unafraid to pose the question is what matters most.