In April 2020 the Association of Art Museum Curators announced the Block Museum exhibition publication Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa as a recipient of the 2020 Award for Excellence. The annual, peer-juried award recognizes curators from around the country for groundbreaking projects that have advanced new […]
Read moreChecking in On…Lois Biggs, Tour Coordinator
During Spring 2020 the Block Museum staff and students continue to connect online and advance the Museum’s teaching and learning mission. This week, we check in on student worker Lois Biggs, who serves as our Tour Coordinator. In addition to being indispensable at The Block, Lois is senior in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and […]
Read more“They said you can’t make a film like this”: Lizzie Borden on revolution, race, and radical action in”Born in Flames” [Audio]
Set in an alternate-reality socialist democratic United States, Lizzie Borden’s speculative fiction Born in Flames (1983) finds the country still plagued by social injustice. This feminist classic is a low-budget, grassroots production, documentary-like in its reflection of a long-gone grungy yet vibrant downtown New York City. Made at the height of the Reagan years, it […]
Read moreChecking in On…Madeline Hultquist, Undergraduate Research Assistant
During Spring 2020 the Block Museum staff and students continue to connect online and advance the Museum’s teaching and learning mission. This week, we check in on Madeline Hultquist, our Research Assistant who is funded through the Office of Undergraduate Research (shown here on screen as she works with Melanie Garcia Sympson, Block Curatorial Associate) […]
Read moreCollection Spotlight: Unidentified Man on Bike, Andy Warhol
Title: Unidentified Man on Bike Artist: Andy Warhol Nationality: American, 1928–87 Date: ca. 1980 Medium: gelatin silver print Credit: Gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, 2008.1.128. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Unidentified Man on a Bike was donated to The Block Museum as part of the Andy Warhol […]
Read moreCollection Spotlight: Two Forms (Divided Circle), Barbara Hepworth
Title: Two Forms (Divided Circle)Artist: Barbara Hepworth (British, 1903–1975)Year: 1969Medium: Cast bronze with brown patinaSize: 93 x 89 x 23 inchesCredit: Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of Leigh B. Block, 1988.3.3 Barbara Hepworth made Two Forms (Divided Circle) at the end of a decade in which she dedicated herself to […]
Read more“The Picture Is the Window”: Lynn Gumpert and Lisa Corrin on Abby Grey and intrepid art collecting [Audio]
Consisting of more than 700 artworks, the Abby Weed Grey Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art at New York University comprises the largest institutional holdings of Iranian, Turkish and Indian modern art in any American university museum. This unparalleled historical resource was amassed by Abby Weed Grey (1902-1983), a self-described “dyed-in-the-wool Midwesterner” from St. Paul, […]
Read moreLetter from the Director: Museums have a unique role to play
On behalf of all of us at The Block Museum of Art, I am writing to tell you that we are thinking of the health and safety of our campus, our regional community, and the cultural community internationally at this very difficult and uncertain time. In his recent message to the Northwestern community, President Schapiro […]
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