From her work in the 1970s as the Creative Director for NASA’s Voyager Interstellar Messaging Project to her current role as writer and producer of the beloved television series Cosmos, Ann Druyan has devoted her life to expanding the horizons of human empathy and communication. In insisting that the thresholds of cosmic exploration must be approached […]
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Damien Chazelle’s meticulously-realized film First Man (2018) follows astronaut Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) and wife Janet (Claire Foy) on the long and difficult path that led from the death of their daughter Karen in 1962 to his 1969 moon landing. While FIRST MAN has no shortage of thrilling astronautical sequences, Chazelle is less interested in […]
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Roger Corman’s visionary 1963 sci-fi classic X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes follows a scientist (Ray Milland) who develops eyedrops that allows him to see beyond the spectrum of visible light, penetrating mysteries of the human body and the deepest reaches of the cosmos. What starts out as a hospital drama about medical ethics […]
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This season Block Cinema in among 40 national organizations selected by the Coolidge Corner Theatre and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation as 2022−23 recipients of the Science on Screen® grant program. Selected recipients receive funds to create Science on Screen events, which pair expert-led discussions of scientific topics with screenings of feature and documentary films […]
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On February 16, 2019 the Art Institute of Chicago announced the results of significant new research on five terracotta sculptures–so named Bankoni after a village in present-day Mali where they were found. The objects date from between the 12th and 15th centuries. This places them “among the oldest surviving sculptures from sub-Saharan Africa and among […]
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Earlier this year, The New York Times reported on a major discovery made by Northwestern scientists, in partnership with the Art Institute of Chicago. An interdisciplinary team had used tools originally developed for medicine, manufacturing and geology to discover hidden details in the Picasso’s paintings and sculptures. Audiences learned more about this fascinating story, which […]
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Prior to Thomas Edison’s groundbreaking invention of sound recording and playback technology in 1877, the ephemerality of sound meant that it only existed in the moment of its creation. To “record” sound before this time meant it appeared as oral or written descriptions or musical scores. In 2008, Patrick Feaster, a researcher and educator […]
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The intact portrait mummy now on view at the Block within the Paint the Eyes Softer: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt has traveled far and wide on her journey to the exhibition. This fall, the ancient artifact became the site of a groundbreaking new study that brought together researchers at the McCormick School of Engineering, the […]
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