The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University is pleased to announce it has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for a Grants for Arts Projects award of $70,000. This grant will support the winter 2025 exhibition Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak/Chicagoland, a years-in-the-making project offering diverse perspectives of Chicagoland’s layered Indigenous art histories. In total, the NEA will award 1,135 Grants for Arts Projects awards totaling more than $37 million as part of its second round of fiscal year 2024 grants.
“Projects like Woven Being exemplify the creativity and care with which communities are telling their stories, creating connection, and responding to challenges and opportunities in their communities—all through the arts,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “So many aspects of our communities such as cultural vitality, health and wellbeing, infrastructure, and the economy are advanced and improved through investments in art and design, and the National Endowment for the Arts is committed to ensuring people across the country benefit.”
“The Block is honored to receive a grant from the NEA for Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak, an exhibition realized with and centering the perspectives of Indigenous artists,” said Kathleen Bickford Berzock, Block Museum Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs and Woven Being curatorial team member. “The NEA’s support recognizes that way that the exhibition brings important perspectives to thinking about North American art histories.”
The Block initiated the exhibition with the question: what would it mean if Indigenous people with ties to this land were the point of entry for thinking about art in Chicago and its region through time? Through the perspectives of four collaborating artists—Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe and European descent), Kelly Church (Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish tribe of Pottawatomi/Ottawa), Nora Moore Lloyd (Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa), and Jason Wesaw (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi) —Woven Being will explore confluences that have shaped and continue to shape Indigenous creative practices in the region. The place now known as Chicago is a critical nexus for Indigenous art and art histories that impact the larger Great Lakes Region and beyond. The artists are partnering with The Block team to create constellations of their own artwork and historical and contemporary artworks by Indigenous artists to shape the exhibition’s content.
Woven Being is part of Art Design Chicago, a collaborative, citywide initiative by the Terra Foundation that highlights the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities. The exhibition was first announced in late 2020, and work has continued since, including curatorial research trips, a rethinking of the grants process, and a reimagining of the entire curatorial process around collaboration and Indigenous methodologies.
The exhibition will run January 25-July 13, 2025, in The Block’s Main & Alsdorf Galleries. For more information on other projects included in the NEA’s grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.
Image: Woven Being artists convene at The Block for an exhibition planning meeting, April 2024
