This past winter quarter, Block Cinema invited its undergraduate student workers to take on a new kind of assignment: to respond, in their own voices, to films in the Exhausted America series. The series, inspired by the work of Professor Heather Hendershot, gathered films that hold a mirror to moments of national weariness and disillusionment. […]
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Artist: Janaina Tschäpe (German-Brazilian, born 1973)Title: Juju 2 (The Sea and the Mountain) Date: 2004Medium: Dye destruction print (Cibachrome / silver dye bleach print)Dimensions: 42 × 52 × 2 in. (framed)Credit: Gift of Giuseppe Ciardi through Museums Exchange, 2026, Image copyright of the artist. When viewers first encounter Juju 2 (The Sea and the Mountain), […]
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This June, The Block Museum of Art traveled to Iowa City to take part in the annual conference of the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG), where two members of our team led sessions exploring how academic museums support teaching, research, and community engagement through art. The AAMG is the leading educational and professional […]
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The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University has acquired and you, all future tense, leak through (2023) by Chicago-based Vietnamese American artist Antonius-Tín Bui through the museum’s annual student-led acquisition program. Selected by the 2025–2026 cohort of Block Museum Student Associates (BMSAs), the work joins the museum’s collection as part of […]
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Artist: Hiratsuka Un’ichi 平塚運一 (Japanese, 1895–1997) Title: Stone Bridge, Katsura, Kyoto Date: 1966 Medium: Woodblock print on paper Dimensions: 33 ½ x 25 in. Credit Line: Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Van Zelst, 1985.109 As is custom, all Japanese names are listed by family name […]
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On May 14, the Master of Arts in Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine hosted artist and anthropologist Teresa Montoya (Diné, born 1984) for its 5th Annual Carlos Montezuma Native Health Lecture, co-sponsored by The Block and the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR). The lecture series is […]
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Artist: Gillian Wearing (British, born 1963) Title: Video Still (Homage to the Woman with the Bandaged Face) Date: 1995‒96 Medium: Reversal film dye coupler print Dimensions: 16 3/4 in x 23 1/4 in Credit: Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of Peter Norton, 2016.4.60. Imagine walking down the street and brushing past myriad faces—an experience typical of […]
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In Spring 2026, Northwestern senior Maggie Munday Odom (Theatre, English Creative Writing, Environmental Policy and Culture, and Religious Studies) traveled with Erin Northington, The Block Museum’s Susan and Stephen Wilson Associate Director of Campus and Community Education and Engagement, to attend The Art of Encounter: Exploring Spiritual Engagement with Art Objects, a symposium hosted by […]
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In May 2026, The Block Museum hosted an online conversation about Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #215 (1973). Erica DiBenedetto, curator at the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a scholar of LeWitt’s work, joined Block Academic Curator Corinne Granof to discuss the wall drawings as a practice: how they are made, why LeWitt […]
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This spring, Associate Professor Carolyn Tang Kmet brought her Medill Integrated Marketing Communications graduate students to The Block for an experiential learning module exploring how consumers engage with physical, digital, and spatial representations of the same object. The project, led by Kmet and developed in partnership with Sony XYN and Northwestern Emerging Technologies Lab, gave […]
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