The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University presents Exhausted America, a Block Cinema film series featuring rare 16mm and 35mm screenings that explore endurance, competition, and disillusionment in American life. The series runs February 19 through March 12, 2026, and includes Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969), Robert Altman’s […]
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Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #215 (1973) is a site-specific “location drawing” realized directly on the gallery wall through a set of written instructions. One of roughly 1,350 wall drawing instructions LeWitt produced, the work reflects his belief that the idea behind a work of art is as central as its final appearance. Because each installation […]
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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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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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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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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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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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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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On November 12, 2025, The Block Museum welcomed artists Anna Kunz and Soo Shin and art historian Lane Relyea for Printmaking in Process, an evening shaped by the spirit of experimentation at the heart of Pouring, Spilling, Bleeding: Helen Frankenthaler and Artists’ Experiments on Paper. Moderated by exhibition co-curator Stephanie S. E. Lee, the conversation […]
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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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