Reframe, an ongoing collaboration between Northwestern Department of Athletics and Recreation and The Block Museum of Art, returned this month for its third annual event, bringing student-athletes, coaches, staff, and campus partners together to engage with works from The Block’s collection through conversation and community-building.

The initiative connects athletics and the arts through facilitated dialogue, teaching resources, and ongoing programming grounded in the museum’s collection. Its goal is to foster reflection, strengthen community, and support holistic student development while connecting Athletics participants to campus cultural resources.

Nearly one hundred attendees gathered at the Walter Athletics Center for this year’s event, which combined structured art engagement with a lively social atmosphere. The evening included food, informal conversation, and a musical performance by student-athlete and B1G Ten Fellow Ava Earl, whose songwriting and reflections helped set the tone for the event. Featured artist and longtime Reframe collaborator Dwight White II, a multidisciplinary artist and former Northwestern football student-athlete, delivered a keynote about creativity, identity, and life beyond sport.

Together, these elements reflected Reframe’s broader aim: creating space for art, athletics, and student experience to intersect in ways that feel welcoming, reflective, and communal.

Focus on the Collection

This year’s event centered on six portraits from The Block Museum’s collection that are under consideration for display in the museum’s Living Room in Fall 2026, a drop-in gallery space designed for informal looking and conversation. These works, by Cara Romero, Kachelle Knowles, Leonard Suryajaya, Derrick Woods-Morrow, Widline Cadet, and Omar Victor Diop, were selected by members of the Athletics community for their resonance with the student-athlete experience. A selection will ultimately go on view next fall, accompanied by reflection prompts and programming shaped by conversations from Reframe.

Erin Northington, Associate Director for Campus and Community Education and Engagement at the Block, said this year’s event placed particular emphasis on sustained engagement with specific works.

Discussions were guided by two core prompts familiar to many Block teaching programs:

What do you see?
What do you think?

The approach prioritizes observation first, followed by interpretation and dialogue, encouraging participants to build shared understanding through close looking and conversation.

Connecting through Art

For many student-athletes, Reframe offers a rare opportunity to slow down, reflect, and engage in dialogue outside the demands of competition and coursework. In doing so, the program reflects The Block Museum’s broader mission: to activate art as a form of insight and knowledge creation that makes human experience visible and material.

Programs like Reframe build on the museum’s teaching initiatives, which have shown how sustained engagement with original works of art can deepen student learning, both within and outside of the formal classroom setting. A closer look encourages participants to move beyond first impressions and develop interpretations grounded in observation and evidence. It strengthens sustained attention in a fast-paced environment, builds confidence in navigating complex ideas without easy answers, and fosters intellectual flexibility by prompting students to reconsider assumptions and engage multiple perspectives. Just as importantly, shared encounters with art create common ground for dialogue across differences, emphasizing listening and authentic exchange.

In the context of Athletics, these outcomes take on added resonance. Student-athletes are accustomed to high-performance environments that demand focus, adaptability, and teamwork. Reframe channels those same capacities toward intellectual and interpersonal growth in a new context.

A central component of the program is student leadership. Prior to the event, student-athletes, coaches, and Athletics staff participated in facilitation trainings led by The Block, practicing close looking strategies and preparing to guide conversations about works of art with their peers. At the event itself, those facilitators led discussions at each artwork station.

“We set up the structure, but the facilitators ran the conversations,” said Erin Northington. “They showed real openness to trying something new and engaging thoughtfully with each work, their artists, and big ideas.”

At the event, participants shared written reflections and took part in a collaborative voting process, using colorful pom poms each to indicate which artworks resonated most strongly. Responses were widely distributed rather than converging on one favorite, reflecting the range of perspectives participants brought to the experience.

Insights from these conversations will inform how selected works from the Block’s collection are presented in the Living Room in Fall 2026, including reflection prompts shaped directly by student dialogue.

“It’s meaningful when people know their peers helped shape the questions they’re engaging with,” Northington added. “It extends the conversation beyond the event itself.”

Expanding Visibility Across Campus

The partnership extended beyond the Reframe event itself when Northwestern Athletics highlighted the collaboration during a recent men’s basketball game. Dwight White II was recognized on court for his leadership in the arts and his role in shaping the partnership between Athletics and The Block Museum.

Artworks from The Block appeared on digital screens throughout the arena concourse, an information table introduced fans to the collaboration, and White’s own artistic work was also featured. The recognition provided a highly visible moment to share a partnership that often unfolds privately through smaller conversations, teaching moments, and sustained engagement over many years.

Planning is underway for the Fall 2026 Living Room installation, with insights from Reframe continuing to shape artwork selection and interpretation. More broadly, The Block Museum and Northwestern Athletics see the partnership as an ongoing opportunity to connect art, student life, and campus community in meaningful ways.