Past and present, history and myth, reality and spectacle are conflated and distorted in Federico Solmi’s The Great Farce (2017), a monumental media work in the collection of Northwestern University’s Block Museum of Art, on view this fall. The museum will mount its first full presentation of Solmi’s installation with the exhibition Federico Solmi: The Great Farce […]
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18 international artists and collectives look at the challenges of climate change in touring exhibition. In 2006, a major earthquake rocked the island of Java causing massive destruction and loss of life. The disaster inspired Indonesian artist Arahmaiani to work with local students, asking what was needed in their community in the face of such […]
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Northwestern’s Block Museum and McCormick School of Engineering jointly present The Heart’s Knowledge: Science and Empathy in the Art of Dario Robleto (January 26 – July 9, 2023) • Exhibition result of multi-year collaboration between Northwestern Engineering and Block Museum • Artist’s exhibition culmination of ten years of work – the result of exchange and […]
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The average museum visitor spends less than 30 seconds looking at a work of art. It usually takes us far less than that to draw conclusions about what we see; the human brain seems to perform this work automatically and instantaneously. How can we slow down our looking habits to better understand the process of […]
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Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s on view at The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University September 22 – December 4, 2022 From September 22 – December 4, 2022 the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University will present Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s. The exhibition explores mid-20th-century abstract art […]
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Northwestern’s Block Museum of Art centers teaching and learning as its primary mission. While the museum daily welcomes class tours, discussions, and groups from across the University, two 2022 courses go even further. Held within the museum walls these courses take the exhibition “A Site of Struggle: American Art against Anti-Black Violence” as the primary […]
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Five years in the planning, new exhibition stakes a claim on the power of the visual to make change Originating at Northwestern’s Block Museum of Art A Site of Struggle 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. Images […]
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More than 80 new acquisitions on view invite audiences to consider how artists and collections challenge our view of the past How do artists, artworks, and museums shape and challenge our understanding of the past? The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University celebrates its 40th anniversary and the full reopening of its galleries with the […]
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“What are you most in need of right now?” This question and prompt is at the center of a new special exhibition now open outside Northwestern’s Block Museum of Art. Behold, Be Held, on view April 19 through August 22, 2021, uses the exterior windows of The Block, the neighboring Ethel M. Barber Theater, and […]
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A major exhibition opening at The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University on January 21, 2020, seeks to expand Western perspectives of modern art. Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection surveys art from three nations where unique and vibrant forms of modernism sprang forth in the 1960s and […]
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