The Block Museum of Art is in the midst of researching and planning a 2025 exhibition with the working title Woven Being: Indigenous Art in Chicagoland. The exhibition planning process has centered Indigenous methodologies that prioritize collaboration, reciprocity, and sustained dialogue. This includes planning by a curatorial team including; Jordan Poorman Cocker ([Gáuigú (Kiowa)), Terra Foundation Guest […]
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How can funding models and grant-writing processes be more equitable and inclusive? At The Block, collaborators Kate Hadley Toftness and Lois Taylor Biggs (Cherokee Nation and White Earth Ojibwe) are challenging traditional approaches to fundraising with practices informed by Indigenous practices of collaboration, reciprocity, and sustained dialogue. In the below essay, originally published on the American […]
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In Spring 2023 The Block opened The Living Image of Sound: Notes on Jazz and Protest at Northwestern a concise exhibition exploring the intersections of visual art, music, and student-led social justice movements during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The exhibition features artwork and ephemera related to the trailblazing poet and musician Sun Ra and […]
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In February 2023 Princeton University Press reached out to a few of its authors with a question. What do you find is commonly misunderstood about Blackness in America? Janet Dees, The Block’s Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and editor of A Site of Struggle: American Art against Anti-Black Violence, […]
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The Block Museum exhibition A Site of Struggle: American Art against Anti-Black Violence concluded its tour on November 6, 2022, closing its run at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in Montgomery, Alabama. To mark the conclusion of this project we are honored to share an archive reflecting just a portion of the exhibition comments […]
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How can museum professionals advocate for museums to be a place for difficult conversations? In September 2022, Janet Dees, the Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum curator of modern and contemporary art at the Block Museum joined colleagues Angie Dodson, director of Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Ashley Rogers, Director of Museum Operations for the Whitney […]
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The Block is currently forming the exhibition Woven Being: Indigenous Art in Chicagoland (working title) through Indigenous curatorial methodologies that prioritize collaboration, reciprocity, and sustained dialogue with an expanding, intergenerational community of Indigenous knowledge sharers and non-Indigenous allies. The Block’s Lois Biggs, (Cherokee Nation and White Earth Ojibwe) Terra Foundation Curatorial Research Fellow, shares a personal account […]
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Why would you want to be involved with this exhibition? Why do you take on challenging material in your scholarship? How do you support your well-being while researching issues related to anti-Black violence? The Block Museum exhibition A Site of Struggle took over five years in planning – a long process in which the curators […]
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Originating at Northwestern University’s Block Museum of Art, A Site of Struggle: American Art against Anti-Black Violence explores how artists have engaged with the reality of anti-Black violence and its accompanying challenges of representation in the United States over a 100 + year period. In conjunction with this exhibition, a national group of curators, educators, and scholars convened […]
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The NAACP’s 1935 exhibition, “An Art Commentary on Lynching,” and its use in anti-lynching activism represents a critical but often overlooked moment in American art history. In March 2022, The Block Museum hosted a special conversation about this historical exhibition, the intersection of art and activism, and connections to A Site of Struggle and our community today. […]
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