In addition to their work shaping The Block’s exhibitions and programming, staff members often participate in professional activities in the broader museum field. In October, Erin Northington, Susan and Stephen Wilson Associate Director, Campus and Community Education and Engagement, traveled to Arizona to participate in the Photography Network’s fourth annual conference. Erin took a moment to reflect on her experience.

In late October 2024, I was honored to represent the Block Museum at the Photography Network’s fourth annual conference to share our community-engaged exhibition and engagement practices in A Site of Struggle: American Art Against Anti-Black Violence, how these approaches have carried forward at the Block, and some of the important lessons learned.

The Photography Network is a national organization of artists, curators, and scholars that fosters discussion, research, and new approaches to the study and practice of photography in its relation to art, culture, society, and history. Held in Tucson, Arizona in partnership with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona with a focus on Latinx photography, the 2024 symposium, In Relation: Photography’s Communities, explored two broad, guiding questions: “How have artists used photography to probe issues of visibility, belonging, and representation? What is photography’s potential to forge connections across distances of all kinds, and to operate as a form of community activism?”

I participated in a closed-door roundtable workshop dedicated to sharing case studies of working with Community Advisory Boards. I presented alongside colleagues from the Center for Creative Photography who spoke about their community advisors for the Louis Carlos Bernal: Retrospectiva and The Art Galleries at Black Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and the community-engaged work they led for the 2022 exhibition In Conversation: Will Wilson at the Delaware Art Museum. My presentation focused on our Evanston Community Advisory Board for A Site of Struggle and how our advisors informed visitor experience, co-created programming, and helped to build new relationships for lasting impact at The Block and in our community. Through the candid conversation that followed with symposium attendees, we discussed together how museums can – and should – best make space for voices and perspectives that are often de-centered in higher education and museum practice and the ways that this multivocal approach enriches our exhibitions, broadens our understanding of our collections, enlivens our role in our communities, and leads to meaningful change.

We enjoyed two lively days of scholarly papers, artist panels, rich conversation, guided visits to Laura Aguilar: Nudes in Nature at the Phoenix Art Museum and current exhibitions at the Center for Creative Photography, and an evening walking tour of Tucson’s past, present, and future led by Borderlandia, a binational organization committed to building public understanding of the borderlands. I left Tucson inspired, energized, and committed to continuing to consider how artists, museums, and scholars spark, build, and maintain community across cultural and historical boundaries in vital ways.

Contributed by Erin Northington, Susan and Stephen Wilson Associate Director, Campus and Community Education and Engagement