Museum News, Staff Stories

The Block Museum of Art Announces Retirement of Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs Kathleen Bickford Berzock

The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, announces that Kathleen Bickford Berzock will retire from her position as Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs in June 2026. The Block is immensely grateful for Berzock’s extraordinary contributions to the museum and to Northwestern.  Berzock arrived at the University in January 2014, having spent eighteen years as […]

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Collection Spotlight

Collection Spotlight: Bruce Conner, #113, 1970

Artist: Bruce Conner (American, 1933 – 2008)Title: #113Date: 1970Medium: Offset lithograph on paperDimensions: 20 3/16 × 14 1/4 in. Credit: Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of The Conner Family Trust, San Francisco, 2025.1.6 From January 5 to February 1, 2026, a number of Bruce Conner’s works will be on view […]

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Exhibition Stories, Museum News

The Block Museum presents 2026 photography exhibitions by Hamdia Traoré and Teresa Montoya

This winter, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University presents two exhibitions drawn from recent museum acquisitions of photographic portfolios. The exhibitions Hamdia Traoré’s Des marabouts de Djenné and Muslim Portraiture in Mali and Teresa Montoya’s Tó Łitso (Yellow Water): Ten Years After the Gold King Mine Spill will be on […]

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Northwestern Learning, Student Associates

Students Gather for “Inherited Impressions” Tour and Workshop at The Block and Dittmar Gallery

Earlier this month, students gathered for Inherited Impressions, a collaborative evening hosted by the Dittmar Gallery’s Crafting Community Workshop series in partnership with The Block Museum Student Associates. Led by Maggie Munday Odom ’26, Student Supervisor of Programs & Engagement at the Dittmar Memorial Gallery, and Block Museum Student Associate Tyree Walton ’27, the program […]

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Programs & Events

Dyani White Hawk and Caroline Kent in Conversation [Video]

On November 19, 2025, The Block Museum welcomed artists Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota) and Caroline Kent for an in-depth conversation on abstraction, artistic lineage, and the lived experiences that shape their practices. Co-presented with Northwestern’s Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR) as the Fall 2025 Indigenous Feminisms keynote, the program brought together […]

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Collection News, Museum News

Shunk-Kender’s Lens on the Avant-Garde: The Block Receives Major Gift of 201 Photographs Documenting Performance, Experimentation, and Studio Life

The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University has received a major gift from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation: 201 black-and-white photographs by the artist team Shunk-Kender and photographer Harry Shunk, documenting some of the most transformative moments in postwar art. This is the largest single gift of vintage photographic prints ever received by the museum […]

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Northwestern Learning, Staff Stories

Meet Muyang Chen , 2025-2026 Curatorial Intern

Meet Muyang Chen, a fourth-year Northwestern University student majoring in Anthropology and Art History. With academic interests rooted in modern and contemporary art — especially queer art and its political, affective, and material strategies — Muyang brings a critically engaged approach to understanding how artworks operate within (and push against) institutional contexts. As a curatorial […]

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Collection Spotlight

Collection Spotlight: Leon Lewandowski, “Picture of Cora Ward,” ca. 1950

Artist: Leon Lewandowski (American, 1932 – 2005)Titles: Picture of Cora WardDate: c.1950Medium: Gelatin silver printDimensions: 7 9/16 in x 7 1/2 in inchesCredit Line: Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of Steve Nordman, 2017.10.2 Leon Lewandowski (American, 1932– 2005) has been described as a “forgotten street photographer.”1 Indeed, much of Lewandowski’s work did not see the light of […]

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