From soaring joy to deep grief, beaming pride to livid outrage, the photojournalists of the Chicago Sun-Times captured these emotions and more as they doggedly, and often artfully, documented the city’s breaking news. Their bold images—of sports and entertainment legends, presidents, and everyday Chicagoans—earned the Sun-Times the moniker “Chicago’s Picture Newspaper” during the twentieth century.

Featuring 150 images from the Chicago History Museum’s Chicago Sun-Times collection, Millions of Moments is a first look at highlights from five million negatives spanning the 1940s to the early 2000s—one of the largest newspaper photograph collections ever acquired by an American museum. As the Museum continues to process negatives from this extraordinary collection, new images will be shared through digital portals that reveal the real Chicago through the lenses of award-winning Sun-Times photographers.

Processing of the Chicago Sun-Times collection is generously supported by the TAWANI Foundation, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, and Bon and Holly French. Funding for Millions of Moments provided by Jamee & Marshall Field V and DePaul University.