Pasados Presentes: Cultural Memory in the Americas: Block Museum - Northwestern University
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Pasados Presentes: Cultural Memory in the Americas

pasado
February 3-June 9, 2027
Main Gallery
Image 1: Patricia Perez Eustaquio: Emporium at Silverlens New York, 2024. Courtesy Silverlens (Manila / New York).  Photo: Tammy David  Image 2: Unidentified artist, The Child Mary Spinning (La niña María hilando)[detail], 18th century. Oil and gold on canvas, 31 1/8 × 24 3/4 × 1 in. (79.1 × 62.9 × 2.5 cm). Collection of Carl & Marilynn Thoma, 2001.6. Image 3: Maria José Murillo, Urdiendo el pasado, tramando el futuro (Warping the past, weaving the future), 2019. Image Courtesy of Livia Benavides Gallery, Photo: Ali Alfadly. Image 4. Unidentified artist, Saint Francis Xavier, Apostle of the Indies (San Francisco Javier, Apóstol de las Indias) [detail], 18th century. Oil on canvas, 40 1/4 × 32 5/8 × 1 in. (102.2 × 82.9 × 2.5 cm). Collection of the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation, 2016.069.

In 2027, The Block will present Pasados Presentes: Cultural Memory in the Americas, an original, bilingual exhibition that places colonial paintings from the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation’s Art of the Spanish Americas collection in dialogue with contemporary sculpture, textiles, photography, painting, and mixed-media installations by artists from across the Americas and the Philippines.

Together, these works reveal how artists have used and adapted materials and artistic forms to transmit cultural memory, reinterpret inherited histories, and shape understandings of identity and place. By approaching materials and media as inseparable from meaning, Pasados Presentes asks how art participates in telling the histories of the Americas and whose stories those histories preserve, obscure, or reimagine.

Pasados Presentes: Cultural Memory in the Americas is curated by Jesús Escobar, Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor in the Humanities and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Art History, and Kyle Stephan, the Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University. Lead support for the exhibition is provided by the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation. Additional generous support is provided by The Alumnae of Northwestern University. 

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En 2027, The Block presentará Pasados Presentes: Memoria cultural en las Américas, una exposición original y bilingüe que pone en diálogo pinturas coloniales de la colección Arte de las Américas Españolas de la Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation con obras contemporáneas —esculturas, textiles, fotografías, pinturas e instalaciones de técnica mixta— de artistas de distintas partes de las Américas y Filipinas.

En conjunto, estas obras revelan cómo los artistas han utilizado y adaptado materiales y formas artísticas para transmitir la memoria cultural, reinterpretar historias heredadas y configurar ideas sobre la identidad y el lugar. Al abordar los materiales y los medios como inseparables del significado, Pasados Presentes plantea cómo participa el arte en la narración de las historias de las Américas y qué relatos preservan, ocultan o reinterpretan esas historias.

Pasados Presentes: Memoria cultural en las Américas está curada por Jesús Escobar, profesor Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison de Humanidades y director de Estudios de Pregrado del Departamento de Historia del Arte, y Kyle Stephan, curador Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum de Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo de The Block Museum of Art de Northwestern University. El apoyo principal para la exposición proviene de la Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation. The Alumnae of Northwestern University también brinda un generoso apoyo adicional.