The Terra Foundation for American Art announced on June 29, 2017 a broad slate of grants given in support of Art Design Chicago, a wide-ranging initiative the Foundation is spearheading to explore Chicago’s vibrant creative history and enduring influence on art and design. Terra leadership confirmed 33 grants for Art Design Chicago projects given to 31 cultural organizations […]
A roundtable discussion of Annual New York Avant Garde Festivals, moderated by Hannah Higgins, professor of art history at University of Illinois at Chicago, and featuring Carolee Schneemann, multidisciplinary artist who transformed the discourse of the body, sexuality, and gender; Alison Knowles, multi-media Fluxus artist; Jim McWilliams, designer of most of the posters for the […]
Mimi Brody, Film Curator at Block Cinema, reports back on the Toronto International Film Festival Last week I returned from the Toronto International Film Festival, one of the most important annual film events of the year and a major showcase for new contemporary international cinema. I spent a week at the Festival and saw 38 […]
A foundational figure of the “New Arab Cinema” movement that began in the 1970s, Moumen Smihi (born in Tangier, Morocco in 1945) is one of the most important Arab filmmakers working today, whose exceptional films are as fearless in their politics as they are quietly radical in form. With recent screenings at Cannes, Marrakech, and […]
Block Cinema’s screening of Body and Soul (1947), a cautionary tale about greed and consumerism, seen through the lens of corruption in the boxing world. John Garfield plays an up-and-coming Jewish boxer who dreams of becoming a champ to raise him out of the crushing poverty of New York’s Lower East Side. According to The […]
When Northwestern student Judy Suh (SoC ’13) was looking for gallery space to film a scene for her film Portraiture, she came knocking on the Block’s door. Fortunately we were able to accommodate her request, and Suh, her crew and actors recently spent a day filming on the Museum’s second floor. We asked Judy, the film’s […]
On May 16, 2009, the Block hosted a panel discussion about Gordon Parks’s influence on photography and film. Participants included Bob Black, cofounder and vice president of the Chicago Association of African American Photographers; Philip Brookman, director of curatorial affairs, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Darlene Clark Hine, chair and professor, Department of African […]