Omar Victor Diop, Juan de Pareja, from the series Project Diaspora (2014)

Every time I look at this piece, it changes: sometimes I see the face looking right at me, other times just away or just up, evading me. Regal and refined, it looks like a classic European portrait. …From far away, it reads as a painting. The background looks like brushstrokes and still does when you get close, but I see now that it is a photograph. … The subject’s face is difficult to read: is he proud? Bored? Despite its uniqueness, his expression feels ordinary. He’s been here before; he’s used to this.
– Keya Soni Chaudhuri (Learning Sciences and Journalism ’27)

I’m writing this while making what seems to be direct eye contact with Juan de Pareja. I find his gaze intimidating, calm, and mildly judgmental. … The slight upward tilt of his head as he stares straight ahead feels like a way of saying, “Look me in the eyes,” while his neutral expression feels like he is putting up a brick wall.Then my gaze drifts back down to the other two-thirds of the piece, and upon looking closely, I see the incredible texture of the materials that is lost from far away. Whenever I’m in the living room, I wonder, “What else do we lose when we look at things too broadly?”
– Leila Murray (Manufacturing and Design Engineering ’28)

The Living Room: the lamp

This is a lamp from the table of the Living Room, and possibly one of my favorite lamps ever (the photo really doesn’t do it justice). It is a beautiful lamp with a hemispherical-shaped light and a spherical but very sturdy, orange-colored base. … This lamp caught my eye because it is now that time of sophomore year where my friends are discussing moving out, and naturally, I have great visions of furnishing my future home with cute lamps like this one. Art evokes a wide range of emotions from its audience, but sometimes, we can find art in everyday items that simply make us feel at home. The Living Room is decorated with plenty of such items, including its many comfy chairs and tables and, of course, the house-shaped tissue box mere inches away from this lamp, which was a close second for my favorite feature of this exhibit. My study of this lamp has raised one very important question: where can I buy one?
– Chung Yu Kwok (Data Science and Classics ’29)

The Living Room: the “Look Close” wall

The Living Room feels like a more collaborative space where people come to work and share their own interpretations of pieces from the museum. … On this wall, visitors were invited to look at that artwork and answer a series of prompts. What I found interesting was seeing other people copy the work and how their versions differ. Many people focused on the print’s clothing and gave meticulous attention to the detail of the clothes on the figure, with not as much attention to the face. Others drew a face and one person even drew the entire room with the artwork taking the backseat in the depiction. … Additionally, there is a community depicted on this wall with birthday wishes and shared appreciation for the Block Museum.
– Wallis Rogin (Journalism and History ’29)

Edward Steichen, Radio City, New York (1932)

I was drawn to this piece because of its unique form. The various shapes overlap, creating new forms. …The double-exposure technique places the two photographed scenes in a surprising juxtaposition. On one end, we seem to see the factories and their workers. On the other end, we see the soaring buildings that industrialization produced, perhaps. It seems to place the “cause” and “effect” of industrialization side by side, and this effect allows me to consider its start and its end. It also leaves space for me, as a viewer, to think about what happened in between.
– Alysa Xia (Art History and Economics ’29)

Henry Simon, Untitled (State and Monroe Streets) (ca. 1965)

This photograph initially caught my eye because of the positioning of its central figures. Instead of confronting the camera, all five people stand with their backs toward the camera, thereby ignoring the photographer instead of facing him. This detail stood out to me in relation to the other photographs in the exhibition, which show people facing the camera and acknowledging its presence through eye contact and poses. … However, Simon’s photo reminded me more of the anonymity I associate with cities, as we can only see the figures’ outlines and the faint details of their clothing, making it harder to connect with the people shown. Additionally, I thought the way the figures were positioned in a neat row across the photo was another interesting detail, as it made them seem like a wall or a collective, instead of separate individuals.
– Claire Gilliam (Art History and Physics ’28

Henry Simon, Skyscrapers and Pedestrians, (c. 1932)

I do not spend that much time with architectural drawings of buildings or skyscrapers, so I felt I was starting from virtually zero. The limited greyscale palette and strong dramatic lines highlight the contrast between dark and light, some of the figures more full than others. It reminded me of the Metropolis movie poster from the late 1920s and the distinctly dystopian Art Deco style. … The buildings seem to converge into each other, making it difficult to distinguish them from one another. … This work instills a sense of clinical discomfort, of regimented and controlled precision, but in a dictatorial rather than guiding manner.
– Tori Montinola (English Literature and Legal Studies ’27)

Clare Romano, New Jersey Turnpike, Night (1962)

My eye is first drawn to the center of the piece, to the bright orange at the right edge. Then my eyes wander to follow the shapes and lines protruding out from the center. To me, the vibrant colors of this print against the inky black background evoke the feeling of being a child and falling asleep in the backseat of a car traveling along a highway at night. At the same time it also recalls my experiences in archaeology, pulling brightly colored scraps of plastic from dark earth, scraps so broken and battered they are initially alien and unidentifiable. The shapes in this painting give me the same impression of trying to comprehend fragmented parts of an artificial whole while lacking the full context or awareness to truly understand what they represent.
– Laurel Anderson (Environmental Engineering and Archaeology ’28)

Clare Romano, Into the Clefts (1963)

When I first saw this piece, it caught my eye as a depiction of a vibrant city street snaking through dark, high-rise buildings. If you linger for just a moment longer, you realize that the piece is made up entirely of strokes and lines, and the cityscape is what we create in our minds. There is movement in the colors of the piece, each seeming like a blur of traffic and people. While night closes in, as depicted in the sunset colors of the sky and the stark black sides, the city below is undoubtedly alive. … I loved how no part of this artwork was clear, yet the depiction of the city is unmistakable.
– Rajeshwari Rawal (Journalism and Cognitive Science ’28)

Romano’s almost explosive woodprint, comparable to deciphering the city’s chaos reflected in a puddle of water on asphalt, feels highly provocative. … Could this abstracted depiction speak to the personal process of trying to interpret the chaotic, exciting spectacle of a city, rather than simply depicting the city itself?
– Simon Mango (Cognitive Science and Art Theory & Practice ’29)

David Jones, Subtitle Revisited (2002)

One of the most interesting aspects of the work, to me, is the contrast between the blurriness and darkness of the central figure in the foreground, and the relative clarity and lightness in the background. The work evokes a lot of movement and a daze-like shakiness, which is compounded by the fact that it appears to be composed of six separate prints pieced together. A number of questions arise: Who is that central figure? What does the title, Subtitle Revisited, evoke or achieve? A feeling I can sort of isolate is the specific experience of feeling stuck in place while the world moves on around you.
– Vanya Saksena (Economics and Global Health Studies ’27)

Henry, Simon, Untitled (At Newberry Theater) (1961)

I was drawn to the photo titled Untitled (At Newberry Theater). From this photo you can get a glimpse of someone’s everyday life. I feel like the photo was taken unstaged and I believe that gives it a very candid feeling. From the photo I want to learn more about the three boys. Have they gone to this theater before? Are they skipping school to see a movie? Are they trying to escape the mundane of life?
– McCall Vickers (Journalism and Black Studies ’29)

Bronislaw “Bruno” Bak, One Hundred Views of Chicago (1967)

Looking at these 18 views of Chicago together, I was drawn to how each one exhibits a different scene of the city. The rectangular way they are displayed reminded me of looking at a building, with a window into each apartment. Behind every window is a whole separate world, yet all of those lives exist together in one building. I felt something similar here. Each scene shows different people, landmarks, and moments, but together they feel like a love story for Chicago: its history, community, urbanization, and everyday life. My favorite was Michigan Bridge. Two people stand together looking toward the river and the buildings, and there is something very intimate about how small they seem against the city. It reminded me of those standstill moments when everything around you feels hectic, but you find your people, and suddenly you are simply two people looking at the city together.
– Aranza Noriega Blondet (Communication Studies ’27)

Antonius-Tín Bui, and you, all future tense, leak through (2023)

This piece caught my eye because the pattern on the vase reminded me of batik from my home country, Indonesia. The hand-cut paper also reminded me of postcards that my family loves to collect from Japan. I especially like how the piece combines the rigidity of the broken vase with the fluidity of the person and the surrounding forms, which seem to spill outward. … The idea of breaking out of one’s shell feels particularly noticeable to me, and the layered textures on the paper itself seem to emphasize this.
– Keisha Widjaja (Biology, Science in Human Culture, and Global Health ’28)

The tilt of the piece makes it feel like an artifact in a museum escaping from the boundaries of walls, especially considering the crack in the pottery that is visible on the bottom right. The person contained inside the pottery can now transcend the confines of a lifetime forced on a shelf. This deeply resonates with me, as I often find myself at museums with South Asian artifacts, such as statues of goddesses carved out from temples, that were probably not ethically sourced. I find myself wondering: “Whose hands touched these artifacts centuries before they were uprooted? What personal histories and stories were erased?” Bui answers by giving fluidity to the past of ancient artifacts, granting the people they once encapsulated afterlives that leak into the viewer’s timeline. I think their piece is a harrowing reminder that museums can sometimes violently erase history in an effort to preserve it.
– Shreya Malepati (Neuroscience and Anthropology ’29)

Jenny Holzer, All Things Are Delicately Interconnected

I guess I like the pieces that make you approach them from different angles. And this plate really makes me do that. Why can’t I see all the words at the same time? It’s such a physical viewing experience. I’m so struck by the fingerprints (?) in the dish; they remind me of stone archways. … Maybe that’s the art in these words: chisel any part of it and the entire thing shatters. …People don’t often have dishes that aren’t meant to be used, but I can’t imagine somebody trying to cut green beans on this. What if it ruins the words? Maybe that’s the art too. What if the delicacy of the connection is in the fleeting overlap? … It reminds me of the Chinese folklore of a red thread that connects every person that you are destined to meet. Threads are so… delicate.
– Isaac Lageschulte (Music and Anthropology ’27)

Margaret Burroughs, Two Worlds (1996)

I was first drawn into this piece because of the texture. The varying texture in hair specifically caught my attention. I am curious about the opposing light and dark areas and the opposite straight and coily hair. This idea of duality was reinforced for me by the title Two Worlds. It made me think of Du Bois’s concept of a double consciousness and the sort of conscious or unconscious viewing of oneself through both a Black and white lens. … The subject gazes forward and does not look emotional in any one particular way.
–Tyree Walton (Environmental Sciences ’27)

Lisa Sigal, Torn Green (2005)

My first thought when encountering this painting is how unsurprised I was at its creation date being in the 2000s. Having experienced that time as a young kid, I recall everything in shapes and colors and tints of memories. Looking at this painting, in the most abstract and partly illogical sense, I felt like I was looking at a floor plan of my elementary school. The thick sage lines look like outlines of walls and patio areas, while the red lines look like paths with flipped-view stairs. … Most strikingly, the light sage intermixed with beige, hints of this sea blue, and bright orange, are reminiscent of the colors in our elementary school posters, the shade of our walls, our paintings, and school-collaged banners. They evoke a unique sense of childish giddiness, like the one you feel when it’s breaktime and you eat a sandwich, combined with an undeniable feeling of melancholy when your mother drops you off at school, and it’s already 3 p.m., and you miss her. This was my favorite work to look at, by far. It is the work I spent the least amount of time trying to “figure out,” and the most amount of time remembering through it.
– Alexia Sextou (Journalism and English Literature ’28)

Laura Aguilar, Grounded #105 (2006/2007)

What initially drew me to this piece was how it brought me an immediate sense of confusion, disorientation, and curiosity because of how little context it offers. I found it interesting, though, how quickly, even after I speculated for a few moments on what I was seeing (skin, a hand, coral, human, animal, or inorganic material?), I decided the objects were skin (torso) against rock. However, this initial impression made me reflect on how the human mind wants to decode visual information in the world to feel grounded, but that sometimes we make mistakes, or we miss out on opportunities to imagine other answers. … It feels like Aguilar has collapsed our sense of scale by comparing the folds of skin to similar folds in the earth in such a raw, vulnerable, and human way. … I wonder if not being able to research this piece, which already offers such minimal visual context, may render this photograph uniquely impactful upon initial encounter.
– Simon Mango (Cognitive Science and Art Theory & Practice ’29)

Chris Pappan, Definition 1

This print seems simple at first but once you get closer to it, a very intricate story unfolds. The artist uses what I believe to be his individual style of collage (I have never seen one quite like this) that consists of an overlay of an old land certificate, an old map, a graphite drawing, and some extra elements. What first caught my attention was the drawing of an Indigenous man’s head … in a ¾, slightly tilted down angle. He has strong eyes, which are lively, fiery but also a bit sad; they seem to be gazing expansively at the horizon. … A red stripe crosses the top part of the artwork, connecting the document, map, and drawing in a visually striking manner.
– Alan Silva (Art History and Cognitive Science ’27)