What happens when we look at modernist art through the lens of horror? This fall, The Block Museum of Art invites visitors to explore that question in a collection-based exhibition created in collaboration with students in Northwestern’s Spring 2025 Art History seminar “Horror Modernism.” 

Taught by Art History professor Jessy Bell in partnership with The Block, the course examined how modern art and architecture often confront us with ruptures—of traditions, histories, landscapes, identities, bodies, and systems of power. In doing so, artists have frequently turned to the conventions of horror not only to make sense of modern existence but also to provoke radical reimaginings of the world.

Meeting twice a week in the museum’s conference room, students studied works from The Block’s collection alongside examples across global modern and contemporary art and architecture. Organized historically and thematically, the course engaged topics such as colonialism, war, revolution, and catastrophe. Students defined devices of horror—including the uncanny, grotesque, abject, and dystopic— to understand how strategies of horror and dread unsettle dominant perceptions. The seminar culminated in both an online exhibition and an installation in the museum’s galleries.

“It wasn’t about artists who set out to make ‘horror art,’” recalls Essi Rönkkö, The Block’s Associate Curator of Collections and Academic Programming. “Instead, students asked what happens if we use horror as a lens for interpreting works of modernism. That shift opened space for surprising and very rich conversations.”

Grappling with the Horrific

Each week, the class gathered at The Block to study a new set of works. They considered not only how horror functions as a method of analysis, but also what it means to confront unsettling images in a gallery context.

“The students thought deeply about what it means to display something as ‘horrific,’ even if the artist never intended it that way,” Rönkkö noted. “That duality—between authorial intent and reception—was at the heart of the project.”

The works on view, selected by the students, span a range of approaches to dread and unease. Harry Sternberg’s Steel Town (1937)  illustrates the bleak realities of workers living under the shadow of a super-sized factory looming over their homes; the only relief offered by the church, the liquor store, or the cemetery. Nicholas Sistler’s Double Indemnity (2010) transforms a quiet domestic interior into a scene of suspense. W. Eugene Smith’s grainy hospital photograph (1966–68) frames institutional care through an unsettling lens, while David Teplica’s fabric-shrouded figure from the Rapture series (1992) reflects on isolation in the midst of the AIDS epidemic.

The exhibition also includes Ida Applebroog’s photographs and manipulated images of distorted clay sculptures, caught between animation and collapse.

Each extended wall label was authored by an individual student, bridging scholarly research with public interpretation. “I like including the name of the writer on object labels whenever I can because it makes the subjectivity of interpretation visible,” Rönkkö explained. “It reminds visitors that all museum texts are written by someone, with a particular perspective.”

A Living Dialogue

Horror Modernism exemplifies the museum’s broader mission: to activate the collection as a site of inquiry, collaboration, and dialogue.

The project intersected with an annual student acquisition project undertaken by the Block Museum Student Associates (BMSAs). Earlier in the year, Bell was invited to speak with this student group about horror in the visual arts, expanding their perspective beyond the more familiar realms of film and literature. The BMSA students went on to recommend the acquisition of three works by Chitra Ganesh. In her vivid and speculative worlds, Ganesh explores themes of identity, marginalization, and futurity—concerns that echoed many of the discussions had by the Horror Modernism class. 

“One of the things I love about both projects is how they help us see works in the collection in new ways and place historical and contemporary works in productive dialogues with each other,” Rönkkö said. “They are great examples of how academic discourse can help us see the world through different lenses.”

Student Contributors

This installation was made possible through the research and writing of students in Art History 395: Horror Modernism (Spring 2025).

• Joseph Mangin ’27, Art History and Journalism
  
• Jennifer Lin ’28, Economics and Art History
  
• Ian Lei ’25, Journalism and Economics
  
• Daniel Wolf ’25, History and Political Science
  
• Audrey Bannister ’25, American Studies
  
• Claire Yoonsuh Kim ’25, Journalism
  
• Daniela Parsley ’25, Human Development in Context
  
• Milan Hawk ’27, Journalism
  
• Nina Skemp ’26, Art History and Learning and Organizational Change
  
• Inaya Fatima Hussain ’26, History and Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences