The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University has received a major gift from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation: 201 black-and-white photographs by the artist team Shunk-Kender and photographer Harry Shunk, documenting some of the most transformative moments in postwar art. This is the largest single gift of vintage photographic prints ever received by the museum and significantly strengthens The Block’s collection in performance, conceptual experimentation, and twentieth-century documentation.

“These photographs offer extraordinary opportunities for teaching at Northwestern,” says Lisa Corrin, The Block’s Ellen Philips Katz Executive Director. “They illuminate how artists in Europe and the US were experimenting with performance, movement, and new artistic forms—exactly the kinds of questions our students explore in art history, performance studies, studio art, dance, history, and beyond. We are deeply grateful to the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation for entrusting The Block with this remarkable material. Their generosity ensures that generations of students will learn from these works, engage with them, and build new scholarship from their study.”

The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation first reached out to The Block in late 2024 with an unexpected proposal: a donation of up to 100 photographs from the extensive Shunk-Kender archive. When Academic Curator Corinne Granof visited the Foundation in New York this past spring, the scope and significance of the gift expanded.

“The Foundation generously gave us free rein to select works that we felt would be most relevant to the museum and University collections,” Granof recalls. They shared hundreds of PDFs, some containing a few photographs and others containing hundreds—nearly 20,000 images in total. With input from faculty in several departments, Granof and her colleagues reviewed each set with an eye toward strengthening Northwestern’s teaching and research.

The Foundation’s relationship to the Shunk-Kender archive stretches back almost two decades. After the death of photographer Harry Shunk in 2006, the contents of his home—including thousands of prints, contact sheets, and negatives—were processed by the state and offered for sale. The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation purchased the material to rescue and preserve the archive, and in 2014, distributed a substantial portion to a consortium of major institutions: the Getty Research Institute, the Museum of Modern Art, Tate, the Centre Pompidou, and the National Gallery of Art. The remaining photographs are now being placed with civic and university museums across the country.

As part of this national initiative, The Block Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago were selected as paired regional institutions. The Foundation encouraged both museums to offer access to one another’s holdings, increasing the pool of Shunk-Kender works available for study and exhibition.

Who Were Shunk-Kender?

Harry Shunk (German, 1924–2006) and János Kender (Hungarian, 1938–2009) met in Paris in the late 1950s. In 1958, they began working as partners, formally crediting their photographs to the shared identity “Shunk-Kender.” They were at the center of the avant-garde artistic scenes in Paris and later New York, producing portraits, photographing exhibitions and gallery openings, and documenting happenings, performances, and ephemeral works from the late 1950s into the 1970s.

They became close to many of the artists they photographed, including Jean Tinguely, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Christo and Jeanne-Claude. They visited studios, documented events on the street and in galleries, and worked intensively from their own studio. Their archive captures a particular moment in the 20th century when artists were experimenting with the liberation of the body and when artworks were taking new forms through performance, installation, and conceptual practices.

One of their best-known works is the 1960 photomontage Leap into the Void, which shows what appears to be artist Yves Klein leaping from the second story of a building onto the street. The final image was produced by combining several negatives developed in the darkroom, part of a total package that included the artist’s stunt, the manipulated photograph, and a newspaper-style publication that was distributed across Paris. The historic photomontage and preparatory images are among the works coming to The Block as part of the acquisition.

“While we picture so many of these legendary events through these photographs, we are not always aware of who made the image or what artistic labor went into creating it,” Granof notes.

Selecting the Works

The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation provided The Block with extensive digital files organized by artist, exhibition, gallery, and project. Granof prioritized photographs that would meaningfully strengthen Northwestern’s existing collections and teaching resources. Her selection focused on:

• Documentation of ephemeral artworks or performances related to Northwestern’s curriculum, including those from Charlotte Moorman, Dick Higgins, John Cage, Peter Moore, and Geoff Hendricks
• Artists whose work is already represented in The Block Museum or Northwestern University Libraries
• Documentation of performances and ephemeral works not yet represented in the University’s collections, such as Lee Bontecou, Yayoi Kusama, and John Baldessari
• Artists whose work aligns with The Block’s collecting strategies and the University’s research strengths
• Artists working in the United States, primarily New York as well as key figures who are active in Paris

The resulting group of 201 photographs includes iconic and lesser-known moments alike:

• Multiple views of Yves Klein’s Anthropométrie de l’époque bleue (1960)
• Yayoi Kusama’s Anatomic Explosion (1968)
• Studio portraits of Andy Warhol
• Dance photographs of Merce Cunningham
• Early images of the Gutai Group
• Portraits of Leon Golub
• Photographs connected to the print studio Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE)
• Extensive documentation of Pier 18 (1971), an experimental waterfront project on an abandoned pier on the Hudson River, involving 27 artists whose performances were photographed exclusively by Shunk-Kender

Granof is especially drawn to the Pier 18 material. “These are wild, totally 1970s performances—high-risk, physical, experimental, sometimes very uncomfortable, and other times funny,” she says. “The performances took place in the spring of 1971, and [The Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA)] exhibited Shunk-Kender’s photographs in the summer of that year. Since the performances took place without audiences, they are known only through the Shunk-Kender documentation. The photographs were absolutely integral to the project.”

Deepening Northwestern’s Avant-Garde Legacy

This gift connects directly to numerous collections and exhibition legacies at Northwestern, including the exhibition A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde 1960s–1980s, a collaboration between The Block and Northwestern University Libraries. It also extends the strengths of the Libraries’ rich performance collections—from the Charlotte Moorman, Dick Higgins, Geoff Hendricks, and Something Else Press archives to the extensive Peter Moore materials documenting Fluxus, Judson Dance Theater, and the explosive growth of experimental performance in 1960s and ’70s New York.

These new photographs deepen these strengths and expand teaching opportunities across campus, offering fresh pathways for students and faculty in performance studies, dance, art history, gender studies, history, and art theory and practice. Several fall-quarter classes have already incorporated selections from the gift.

“This material is eminently teachable and has already been used in several classes this fall,” Granof says. “Students can see how performance, photography, and conceptual art were unfolding together across Paris and New York and think about how new forms of artmaking reflected changing times and new attitudes about art, artists, and creativity.”

The photographs will be accessible for research through the Eloise W. Martin Study Center as well as the Ellen Philips Katz and Howard C. Katz Classroom, which are both dedicated exclusively to art object study. The Block anticipates future opportunities to share them through exhibitions and public programs.

“We are grateful to the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation for expanding the resources available to our students and faculty,” Corrin said. “These photographs now enter a lively campus ecosystem, where they will continue to be looked at, questioned, and reinterpreted by new generations of thinkers.”

Header Image: Harry Shunk and János Kender (German, 1924 – 2006, and Hungarian,1937 – 2009), Shunk-Kender, Kusama happening, “the Anatomic Explosion,” Brooklyn Bridge, NY 1968. Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches. Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation in memory of Harry Shunk and Janos Kender, Photograph: Shunk-Kender © J. Paul Getty Trust. The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2014.R.20), 2025.22.72