From tracing the building, to tracking transience, to transforming the museum field we are thrilled to announce a vibrant season of discussions, tours, and performances hosted by leading artists, filmmakers and thinkers from around the world. Mark your calendar to join these “inquisitive travelers” at the Block Museum this fall.
Opening Celebration:
Five Takes on Tseng Kwong Chi
Saturday, October 1, 2:00 PM
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Tseng Kwong Chi was a Hong Kong-born artist and photo journalist immersed in the downtown New York art scene of the 1980s. Through rapid-fire presentations and performance, Chicago-based artists Rashayla Marie Brown and Leonard Suryajaya, Northwestern professors Joshua Chambers-Letson and Jessica Winegar, and Block Museum curator Janet Dees will explore Tseng’s legacy of cultural infiltration, political subversion, and a life lived inseparable from art. Program followed by conversation in the gallery. Read More
The Big Draw: Tracing the Building
Wednesday, October 5, 6:00 PM
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Walter Kitundu is a multimedia artist and MacArthur Fellow whose practice ranges from building instruments to photographing wildlife. The Block Museum, a modernist structure designed by Chicago architect Dirk Lohan, sits a stone’s throw from Lake Michigan. As part of Evanston’s city-wide Big Draw, people of all ages are invited to join Kitundu in drawing a response to the architecture and the view beyond. Guests are invited to drop in during this two hour program. Read More
Opening Celebration: Salaam Cinema!
Thursday, October 6, 5:00 PM
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5:00pm – Reception & Gallery Talk
6:00pm – Hamid Naficy in conversation with Michelle Puetz
7:00pm – Screening with Noureddin Zarrinkelk in person – “Golden Quill: A Retrospective of Noureddin Zarrinkelk’s Animated Films”
Join us for the kick-off of the Block Cinema film series Iranian Cinephilia and a celebration of the exhibition Salaam Cinema! 50 Years of Iranian Movie Posters. The evening will feature a gallery talk by curators Michelle Puetz and Hamid Naficy, as well as a conversation and screening with “the father of Iranian animation,” Nouredeen Zarrinkelk. Read More
Keep the Shadow: The Body and Mourning
Thursday, October 13, 6:00 PM
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Block Graduate Fellow C.C. McKee will draw connections between mourning-related objects and artworks from the Victorian Era and during the AIDS crisis—the foundation of his exhibition Keep the Shadow, Ere the Substance Fade: Mourning during the AIDS Crisis. McKee will be joined in conversation with professor Alessia Ricciardi, whose work has explored mourning from the perspective of psychoanalysis, literature and film. Read More
A Conversation with Muna Tseng
Wednesday, October 26, 6:00 PM
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Experience the work of Tseng Kwong Chi in a guided tour with Muna Tseng—choreographer, dancer, and sister of the artist. Tseng, who is the trustee of the Tseng Kwong Chi estate, will lead a guided tour focused on her brother’s life and art, giving insight to work whose complexity is belied by its easy humor and grace.
Muna Tseng, founder of Muna Tseng Dance Projects, has made over 30 original works, often in collaboration with composers, directors and visual artists engaged in contemporary practice. Her works have been performed in New York and presented around the world since 1979. Read More
Chicago Humanities Festival:
Hasan Elahi: Art from Surveillance
Saturday, October 29, 2:30 PM
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How do our lives translate to data? After 9/11, American interdisciplinary artist Hasan Elahi was the subject of an intensive, erroneous FBI investigation. He responded by putting his entire life online, from his financial data to transportation logs. The resulting project, “Tracking Transience,” explores the relationship between location, repetition, technology, and surveillance in the media age.
This program in the Richard Gray Visual Art Series is presented in partnership between the Chicago Humanities Festival and the Block Museum of Art.
The Barnes: A Singular Museum’s Past, Present, & Future
Wednesday, November 2, 6:00 PM
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Northwestern alumnus Thom Collins, an innovative museum director and accomplished art historian and educator, is the executive director and president of The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, PA. The Barnes is a renowned collection of post-impressionist and early modernist art that was established by Dr. Albert C. Barnes in 1922 to “promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of fine arts and horticulture.” It has gone through significant transformation in its service to contemporary audiences since its move to Center City Philadelphia in 2012. Collins will share his perspective on the past, present and future of The Barnes and the museum field more broadly in conversation with S. Hollis Clayson, Professor of Art History.
This event is supported by the Block Leadership Circle in honor of Phyllis Weil Ellis and her dedication to the Block Museum.
Inquisitive Traveler: A Walk Through the World(s) of Tseng Kwong Chi
Thursday, November 3, 12:00 PM
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My mirrored glasses give the picture a neutral impact and a surrealistic quality I am looking for. I am an inquisitive traveler, a witness of my time, and an ambiguous ambassador. – Tseng Kwong Chi (1950-1990)
Join us for a lunch time walk through the world(s) of Tseng Kwong Chi led by Block Museum Curator for Global and Contemporary Art, Janet Dees. By focusing on a few select works in the exhibition, Tseng Kwong Chi: Performing for the Camera, Dees will highlight some of the important themes running through the artist’s witty work.
Elizabeth and Todd Warnock Lecture Series: Jennifer Roberts, Harvard University
Wednesday, November 16, 5:00 PM
Roberts is the Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor in the Humanities in the Department of History of Art + Architecture at Harvard University, and will speak on her current research on the arts of the United States. Reception to follow the lecture. This program is organized by the Department of Art History. Read More
Lucid Figurations: Iranian Movie Poster & Film Art
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Thursday, November 17, 7:00pm
Filmmaker Rakhshan Banietemad will open the “Lucid Figurations” symposium with a discussion and screening of her 2014 film Tales.
Friday, November 18, 9:00am
Two panels featuring international scholars and artists will focus on the art of movie poster design and the culture of cinephilia in Iran. The symposium will close with a tribute to Abbas Kiarostami, presented by his son Ahmad Kiarostami.
