Museum News

Block Museum Receives $25,000 Frankenthaler Climate Initiative Grant

Funding will advance the museum’s planning for more sustainable collection care and building operations The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University has received a $25,000 grant from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation through the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative, established in association with Environment & Culture Partners to catalyze climate action in the visual […]

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Museum News, Staff Stories

The Block Museum of Art names Ainsley M. Cameron Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs

The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University has named Ainsley M. Cameron, D.Phil. (Oxon.), as Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs, effective September 1, 2026. Cameron joins The Block from the Cincinnati Art Museum, where she most recently served as Director of Curatorial Affairs & Initiatives. As Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs, […]

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Museum News, Student Associates

Block Museum Student Associates Select Work by Antonius-Tín Bui as 2025–2026 Student Acquisition

The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University has acquired and you, all future tense, leak through (2023) by Chicago-based Vietnamese American artist Antonius-Tín Bui through the museum’s annual student-led acquisition program. Selected by the 2025–2026 cohort of Block Museum Student Associates (BMSAs), the work joins the museum’s collection as part of […]

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Collection News, Museum News

The Block Museum of Art Announces Gift of Fourteen Photographs by Fazal Sheikh Honoring Henry and Leigh Bienen

Spanning more than three decades, the gift brings works addressing displacement, human rights, and environmental justice to Northwestern’s art collection The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University has received a major gift of fourteen photographs by internationally acclaimed artist Fazal Sheikh, given by the artist in honor of Interim President and […]

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Museum News, Staff Stories

The Block Museum of Art Announces Retirement of Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs Kathleen Bickford Berzock

The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, announces that Kathleen Bickford Berzock will retire from her position as Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs in June 2026. The Block is immensely grateful for Berzock’s extraordinary contributions to the museum and to Northwestern.  Berzock arrived at the University in January 2014, having spent eighteen years as […]

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Exhibition Stories, Museum News

The Block Museum presents 2026 photography exhibitions by Hamdia Traoré and Teresa Montoya

This winter, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University presents two exhibitions drawn from recent museum acquisitions of photographic portfolios. The exhibitions Hamdia Traoré’s Des marabouts de Djenné and Muslim Portraiture in Mali and Teresa Montoya’s Tó Łitso (Yellow Water): Ten Years After the Gold King Mine Spill will be on […]

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Collection News, Museum News

Shunk-Kender’s Lens on the Avant-Garde: The Block Receives Major Gift of 201 Photographs Documenting Performance, Experimentation, and Studio Life

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 […]

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Exhibition Stories, Museum News

Northwestern’s Block Museum of Art Presents “Pouring, Spilling, Bleeding: Helen Frankenthaler and Artists’ Experiments on Paper”

Fall 2025 exhibition debuts transformative Frankenthaler Foundation gift in dialogue with museum collection. This fall, The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University presents Pouring, Spilling, Bleeding: Helen Frankenthaler and Artists’ Experiments on Paper, on view September 17–December 14, 2025. The exhibition explores how artists have used printmaking—and works on paper more broadly—as a site […]

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