Artist Dario Robleto returned to Evanston this spring to continue his ongoing collaboration as Northwestern’s inaugural Artist-at-Large, hosted by the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and The Block Museum of Art. The Artist-at-Large Program brings contemporary artists to campus for in-depth exchanges with faculty and students; the Program joins other activities organized by […]
Internationally acclaimed artist and MacArthur Fellow Fred Wilson addressed audiences at The Block on April 16, 2019. In his talk, Wilson shared insights into his work Afro Kismet— resonant with themes of migration and history explored in the exhibition Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa. Throughout his career, […]
This past October writer, curator, and graphic designer Ellen Lupton shared her perspective on design at the Goldsholl studio, the focus of the 2018 Block exhibition Up is Down: Mid-Century Experiments in Advertising and Film at the Goldsholl Studio. In the 1950s and ’60s, the Goldsholl design firm’s creative experiments with light and media found […]
Internationally acclaimed artist and Art, Theory, and Practice faculty member Michael Rakowitz explores culture as it is embodied in artifacts. In projects ranging from a recreation of the Ishtar Gate of ancient Babylon to selling dates in an NYC storefront, he has used both food and material fragments to recreate and reimagine cultural and personal […]
Tyehimba Jess’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry collection, Olio (2016), presents the sweat and story behind America’s blues, work songs, and church hymns. Part fact, part fiction, Jess’s much anticipated second book weaves sonnet, song, and narrative to examine the lives of mostly unrecorded African American performers. Olio is an effort to understand how they met, resisted, complicated, co-opted, and sometimes […]
“The playtime in design is the most joyful experience––the wasted moments in scribbles, dribbles, and scratches that formulate vague thoughts into ideas and dreams into action.” – Morton Goldsholl As part of the opening celebration of the Block Museum exhibition, Up Is Down: Mid-Century Experiments in Advertising and Film at the Goldsholl Studio artists of all ages […]
Renowned Chicago painter and educator Ed Paschke (1939–2004) often began his classes with the assignment to “break a rule.” A bold innovator who enjoyed disrupting conventions, Paschke mentored students for over two and a half decades at Northwestern University, continually coaching them to think outside the box. His work and his teaching were devoted to […]
Local filmmaker and Northwestern professor Kyle Henry’s Rogers Park captures the life, diversity, and flavor of the northside Chicago neighborhood in its story of two couples as they attempt to keep their relationships afloat. Henry and screenwriter Carlos Treviño craft a film that is both universal in its characters’ raw and authentic emotional lives and […]
In March of 2018, the Block Museum and the Northwestern University Library joined together for a special workshop inviting participants to “Read With the Spine.” This two-day event used the site of the library to explore fundamental questions about human experience and the nature of books and libraries themselves, such as: What does it mean […]
Prior to Thomas Edison’s groundbreaking invention of sound recording and playback technology in 1877, the ephemerality of sound meant that it only existed in the moment of its creation. To “record” sound before this time meant it appeared as oral or written descriptions or musical scores. In 2008, Patrick Feaster, a researcher and educator […]