Pulitzer Prize-winning poet brings stories of African-American creatives to life [Audio]

By nublockmuseum

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 […]

Storytelling Series with Art Design Chicago: Amy Beste, Corinne Granof and Jan Tichy [Audio]

By nublockmuseum

In conjunction with the Block Museum of Art’s Up is Down: Mid-Century Experiments in Advertising and Film at the Goldsholl Studio, an exhibition exploring the groundbreaking Chicago design firm that brought Bauhaus aesthetics to the American public through innovative explorations with light and film, curators Amy Beste and Corinne Granof sat down for conversation with artist […]

Filmmaker Talkback: Nathaniel Dorsky on “The Arboretum Cycle”

By nublockmuseum

Since the 1960s, experimental filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky has been making a distinctive and stunning body of work. His silent 16mm films are lyrical explorations of the world around him, focused on the textures, colors, and rhythms of everyday objects and movements. His sharp eye for details reveals the small moments of beauty and wonder to […]

Filmmaker’s Talkback: Director Kyle Henry and Writer Carlos Treviño on “Rogers Park”

By nublockmuseum

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 […]

Medill Digital Storytelling Students Take an Interactive Look at “Unbranded”

By nublockmuseum

Telling stories in a digital environment — for desktop/laptop computers, tablets, and smartphones — requires storytellers to gather information differently and to offer users access to how and where those stories are consumed.  In Spring 2018, Northwestern students in the Medill School of Journalism turned their storytelling lens on the Block Museum of Art exhibition […]

Aymar Jean Christian and Miriam Petty on Intersectional Identities and Peak TV [Audio]

By nublockmuseum

  How do representations of women of color serve to “brand” TV networks and film studios?  In May, 2018 Professors Aymar Jean Christian and Miriam Petty screened clips of recent critically acclaimed shows like Insecure and Queen Sugar and discussed how they fit into strategies of major media brands.  The conversation was presented by the […]

The Block and MENA host Bahman Ghobadi – the “Poet Laureate of Kurdish Cinema”

By nublockmuseum

The Middle East and North African Studies Program and Block Museum of Art joined together in May 2018 to present three days of series of screenings and discussions with one of Iran’s leading filmmakers, Bahman Ghobadi.   The series, titled Life on the Border: The Cinema of Bahman Ghobadi, was made possible by Tamilla Ghodsi (WCAS ‘91) […]

Audio for the Ancients: Sound Design Students Create Sonic Landscape for Block Museum Exhibition

By nublockmuseum

Visitors to the Block Museum exhibition “Paint the Eyes Softer: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt” have been transported not only by the ancient objects on display but also by an ambient exhibition audio track that heightens the meditative experience in the gallery. The exhibition audio is the result of the course “Museum Sound Design” taught by Stephan […]

The Timeliness and Timelessness of Carrie Mae Weems: Ritual and Revolution [Audio]

By nublockmuseum

The Block Museum was thrilled to serve as one of many partners for the 2017 Northwestern University Black Arts Initiative conference “Black Arts International: Temporalities and Territories (October 9-13). This week-long event focused on art and scholarship of the black diaspora around the world.  Conference presenters considered notions of time, space, and place and the ways in […]

“Tune in” to the sounds of “William Blake and the Age of Aquarius” with our exhibition playlist

By nublockmuseum

In the late 1960s, Blake’s words and ideas permeated the culture broadly and profoundly. Some musicians, such as Jim Morrison of The Doors, were inspired by Blake’s poems and adapted his texts for their lyrics, while others conjured abstract themes in Blake, such as innocence and love, that were associated with the ethos of the […]