Publications
These publications are available at Block in Print, the Museum's book and gift shop. Located on the first floor, the shop is open Tuesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 10 to 5 and Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 10 to 6. The shop is not open during the Museum's quarterly closures.
For information about ordering through mail, please contact:
Emily Forsgren
847.491.5893
e-forsgren@northwestern.edu
MFA Thesis Exhibition from the Department of Art Theory & Practice Catalogue
The companion catalogue to the 2012 MFA Thesis Exhibition from the Department of Art Theory & Practice features images and text by artists Robert Chase Heishman, Zach Meyer, Madsen Minax, Rachel Niffenegger, and Megan Schvaneveldt.
Set of 5 individual booklets $10.00
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Kiki Smith: Photographs
The companion to the exhibition I Myself Have Seen It: Photography and Kiki Smith, this catalogue surveys a generous selection of never before seen images, as well as previously published photos, chosen by the artist herself. Written by Elizabeth Brown, chief curator at the Henry Art Gallery, the book makes the case for photography as an essential part of both Smith's artistic process and the acclaimed body of work that includes her sculpture, installations, drawings, prints and books.
ISBN 379134465X (hardcover) $49.95
208 pages
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Imaging by Numbers: A Historical View of the Computer Print
Published in conjunction with the Block Museum exhibition Imaging by Numbers: A Historical View of the Computer Print curated by artist Paul Hertz and Block senior curator Debora Wood, this book showcases the intersection of the graphic arts and digital technology. Included are more than twenty-five reproductions of computer-generated prints and drawings from the 1950s to the present. The book also includes a foreward by David Robertson, the Block’s Ellen Philips Katz Director, and an introduction to the topic by Wood.
ISBN: 0-8101-2505-6 (softcover) $19.95
54 pages; 34 illustrations
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Casting a Shadow: Creating the Alfred Hitchcock Film
Published by Northwestern University Press and the Block Museum, this book expands the investigation into Hitchcock's working methods begun in the exhibition Casting a Shadow: Creating the Alfred Hitchcock Film. The catalogue features an introduction by Block Museum Ellen Philips Katz Director David Alan Robertson and chapters by exhibition curator Will Schmenner, film scholars Scott Curtis of Northwestern University, Tom Gunning of the University of Chicago, Jan Olsson of Stockholm University, and film critic Bill Krohn. Edited by Schmenner and Block Museum associate curator Corinne Granof, the book includes 63 illustrations and 33 plates.
ISBN: 0-8101-2447-5 (softcover) $32.95
156 pages; 99 illustrations
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Prints by Sculptors
Winner of the 2002 American Association of Museums Publications Design Competition
Many of the most significant sculptors of the twentieth century were also printmakers, as exemplified by the exhibition and catalogue Prints by Sculptors: The Rudolph H. and Fannia Weingartner Collection at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art (September 22-December 9, 2001). Richly illustrated and featuring examples by leading twentieth-century artists, including Barlach, Christo, Giacometti, Hepworth, Maillol, Moore, Nadelman, Pepper, Serra, and Shapiro, Prints by Sculptors provides a unique opportunity for understanding the relationship between two- and three-dimensional art. With essays by Rudolph H. Weingartner, collector and former Dean of Northwestern University's College of Arts and Sciences, and Starr Figura, Assistant Curator, Prints and Illustrated Books, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
ISBN: 0-941680-22-3 (softcover) $23.00
105 pages: 60 color plates
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College Proofs: The Riverhouse Editions Collection at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art
Honorable Mention in the 2002 American Association of Museums Publications Design Competition
Riverhouse Editions, a unique printmaking studio that has published the works of leading contemporary artists since 1988, was founded by art dealers and publishers William and Jan van Straaten in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. In 1992, they decided that one intaglio print of each Riverhouse edition would be set aside as a "college proof," so called because these works were to be given to a college or university for educational purposes. The Block Museum of Art has become the permanent home for the college proof archives. Selections from this rich body of work comprise the majority of this catalogue, which highlights the history of the studio, the importance of Riverhouse's setting, and the diverse possibilities of the intaglio technique. This catalogue was published in conjunction with the Block Museum exhibition of the same title, which ran September 21 — October 28, 2001.
ISBN: 0-941680-23-1 (softcover) $23.00
109 pages: 212 color plates
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On European Ground
Published by the University of Chicago Press and the Block Museum in conjunction with the exhibition On European Ground: The Photographs of Alan Cohen, this volume of photographs features over ninety high-quality reproductions drawn from Cohen's series on World War I battlefields, Nazi death camps, and the Berlin Wall. The book contains interpretive essays by Sander Gilman, noted cultural critic and Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and Jonathan Bordo, Professor of Cultural Studies at Trent University, Ontario, Canada. Cohen's own insights into the development of his oeuvre and the significance of his photographs are included in the form of an artist interview conducted by Roberta Smith, contemporary art critic for The New York Times.
ISBN: 0-226-11294-2 (hardcover) $40.00
128 pages: 94 b/w plates
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Manuscript Illumination in the Modern Age
This book examines attitudes toward and treatments of medieval manuscript illumination in France and England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and in early twentieth-century America. Each chapter takes as its title a word used in a particular period to define manuscript illumination: Curiosities, Specimens, Reproductions, Revivals, and Reconstructions. Trends and developments examined include the Enlightenment assessment of medieval miniatures as barbaric playthings, the nineteenth-century growth of a market for medieval art, the impact of reproductive technology on taste for illumination and the early twentieth-century importation of medieval manuscripts to the United States as a means through which to appropriate the history and culture of a European past. By Sandra Hindman, Michael Camille, Nina Rowe, and Rowan Watson.
ISBN: 0-941680-21-5 (softcover) $45.00
329 pages: 38 color plates, 159 b/w illustrations
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Theo Leffman
Theo Leffmann was an important contemporary American fiber artist. This catalogue accompanies a retrospective exhibition presenting and critically examining her life's work. With insightful essays by Mary Jane Jacob and Mildred Constantine, this beautifully illustrated book addresses Leffmann's training, influences, and accomplishments. It also elucidates her role in bringing abstraction and avant-garde practices to fiber art and, at the same time, advancing this medium as a relevant category of avant-garde artistic production.
ISBN: 0-941680-19-3 (hardcover) $30.00
87 pages: 39 color, 21 b/w plates
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Architects Drawings from the Collection of Barbara Pine
Architectural drawings are a window into the creative process and into an understanding of the design and building world. This volume presents conceptual drawings to illustrate how an architect translates an intangible idea into a solid reality. This collection, curated by Pine, focuses on working, presentation, and theoretical drawings by architects of different schools.
ISBN 0-941680-05-3 (Softcover) $5.00
48 pages: 7 color, 24 b/w plates
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Chinese Ceramics from Chicago Collections
This volume developed from a desire to explore porcelain and pottery collections of public and private Chicago collectors. The works contained in this volume have not been previously published or exhibited. Included are works from the Neolithic period to the early twentieth century.
ISBN 0-941680-01-0 (Softcover) $10.00
ISBN 0-941680-01-0 (Hardcover) $15.00
104 pages: 5 color, 82 b/w plates
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Graven Images:The Rise of Printmakers
This volume explores prints and print production in workshops in Antwerp and Haarlem of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Within this period, radical changes took place in the methods of producing prints. This publication looks at the relatively unknown engravers and etchers who executed the designs of famous artists such as Pieter Bruegel, Hieronymus Bosch, and Peter Paul Rubuens.
ISBN (Softcover) $25.00
175 pages: 114 b/w plates
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Master Drawings Rediscovered
This exhibition catalogue by James E. Mundy illustrates and analyzes Old Master drawings from the Block collection and the collection of Esther and Malcolm Bick. Focusing on Italian drawings from a range of artistic centers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the catalogue is a testimony to artistic variety and regional style.
(Softcover) $10.00
93 pages: 45 b/w plates
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Second Sight: Printmaking in Chicago, 1935-1995
This volume highlights the past sixty years of printmaking in Chicago, a period of substantial development in the visual arts. It includes works from the WPA to the Chicago Imagists to computer-generated art. Featured artists include Karl Wirsum, Tony Fitzpatrick, Bill Cass, and Vera Klement.
ISBN 0-941680-17-7 (Softcover) $35.00
224 pages: 110 color, 89 b/w plates
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Henry Simon, 1901-1995
This catalogue examines the life work of Henry Simon, a Chicago artist whose works reflect important cultural, social, and political developments of the twentieth century. Simon began his career designing posters and sets for Chicago movie houses and went on to work as a political cartoonist during the Depression and as a painter for the Illinois Art Project of the Works Progress Administration. The catalogue includes examples of social realist, folkloric, historical American Scene, and Surrealist works executed from the 1920s through 1980.
ISBN 0-941680-18-5 (Softcover) $25.00
76 pages: 16 color, 60 b/w plates
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Stark Impressions: Graphic Production in Germany, 1918 — 1933
This presentation of 143 works organized into six distinct themes provides an extensive view of the diversity, complexity, and cultural surroundings in which these artist thrived. It examines themes of war, religion, urban lifestyle, rural landscapes, struggle for existence, love and sexuality, and fantasy and abstraction. Each theme is examined from the perspectives of German artists.
ISBN 0-941680-12-6 (Softcover) $35.00
358 pages: 9 color, 144 b/w plates
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