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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In Winter 2021 The Block was honored to present Voices Across Time: Sharing Women’s Experiences of Re-entry, a special program bringing together organizers from Beyondmedia Education with current and former members of Grace House, a residential program for women exiting the Illinois prison system. This screening and discussion centered on women’s experiences of re-entry after […]
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Set in an alternate-reality socialist democratic United States, Lizzie Borden’s speculative fiction Born in Flames (1983) finds the country still plagued by social injustice. This feminist classic is a low-budget, grassroots production, documentary-like in its reflection of a long-gone grungy yet vibrant downtown New York City. Made at the height of the Reagan years, it […]
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Consisting of more than 700 artworks, the Abby Weed Grey Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art at New York University comprises the largest institutional holdings of Iranian, Turkish and Indian modern art in any American university museum. This unparalleled historical resource was amassed by Abby Weed Grey (1902-1983), a self-described “dyed-in-the-wool Midwesterner” from St. Paul, […]
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On January 17, 2018, the Block Museum hosted a behind-the-scenes look at the exhibition “Paint the Eyes Softer: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt” with archaeologists, art historians, scientists and scholars of the ancient world. To celebrate the opening of the exhibition panelists shared their insights into the Roman past, including their discovery of what lies […]
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On November 29, 2017, the Block Museum was honored to host a special conversation with four contemporary Native artists. Each of the women on the panel works within a collaborative artistic practice that unites artists, community, and audience. From to participatory dance and collective narratives, to asynchronous poetry and public interventions these artists upend the notion […]
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