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September 19-December 1, 2024

Federico Solmi: The Great Farce

Federico Solmi’s multiscreen, monumental work The Great Farce (2017) conflates and distorts past and present, history and amusement, and reality and spectacle. The digital animation, featuring a cast of time-traveling world leaders with a feverish madness for power, presents a sprawling send-up of empire building as an enterprise and a...

September 19 - December 1, 2024Federico Solmi: The Great Farce

Films By Women/Chicago ’74

Films By Women/Chicago ’74

This fall, the Gene Siskel Film Center and Northwestern University’s Block Cinema will celebrate the fifty-year anniversary of Films by Women/Chicago ’74. Screening series at both venues will revisit some of this historic festival’s most original and daring films and filmmakers, while reflecting on the event’s enduring legacies.

Films By Women/Chicago ’74

One Book Cover

Teaching “The Night Watchman” through The Block’s Collection [PDF]

In The Night Watchman, the 2024‒25 One Book One Northwestern selection, author Louise Erdrich explores themes of identity, family, and tradition as well as poverty, oppression, and exploitation. Inspired by the book, this selection of artworks from The Block’s collection highlights experiences of kinship, rural and urban life, community action,...

Teaching “The Night Watchman” through The Block’s Collection [PDF]

September 18-December 1, 2024

Dissident Sisters: Bev Grant and Feminist Activism, 1968–72

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Bev Grant participated in and photographed left wing and radical protests in and around New York City. The exhibition will consider the period that Grant photographed and present new acquisitions by Grant, alongside related works in the collection from the era.

September 18 - December 1, 2024 Dissident Sisters: Bev Grant and Feminist Activism, 1968–72

September 18-December 1, 2024

Looking 101

Class is in session. Learn to look through art.

September 18 - December 1, 2024Looking 101

September 18-December 1, 2024

The Block Collects

Every year The Block brings new works of art into the collection to support Northwestern University’s teaching and learning mission.

September 18 - December 1, 2024The Block Collects

Upcoming Programs

Free and Open to All

Museums

Cara Romero in Conversation: Students Shape the Collection

Join us at The Block to celebrate the Block Museum Student Associates 2023-2024 acquisition of Cara Romero’s photographs, TV Indians (2017) and Amber Morningstar (2020). Artist Cara Romero will discuss her practice and these new acquisitions to the museum’s collection, following an extended introduction by members of the Block Museum Student Associates program. Romero will be joined in conversation by Aaron Golding, Co-Chair of the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative Education Committee and Sr. Program Administrator in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University.

The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University is an engine that drives questioning, experimentation, and collaboration across fields of study, with visual arts at the center....

OUR MISSION AND VISION

Stories From The Block

Satire and Spectacle: Federico Solmi on ‘The Great Farce’ [Video]

Songs, Stories, and Struggles: Northwestern Students on Bev Grant’s Campus Visit

The Block Museum of Art Welcomes New Board Members: Tara Peters and Kim Vigue

Introducing the 2024-2025 Block Museum Student Associate Cohort

Ruslana Lichtzier and Bev Grant sit opposite each other in the Block Auditorium holding microphones

Capturing the Struggle: Bev Grant in Conversation [Video]

Crafting Films with Plants and Sunlight: Inside Block Cinema’s Phytogram Workshop

Federico Solmi holding a paintbrush and looking at the camera

What is History: An Interview with Federico Solmi

Collection Spotlight: Fred Biesel, Untitled (Window Still Life) Etching Plate