E N G AG E M E N T R E P O RT
n 2019–2020, the Engagement Department continued creating and strengthening connections across Northwestern’s campus, Evanston, the North Shore, and Chicagoland at large.
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In Fall 2019, through the presentation of Pop América, 1965-1975, Engagement built and sustained relationships with both existing and new partners. Previous partners included colleagues from Northwestern’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese and The Poetry Foundation, while budding partnerships included collaborators from the Medill School of Journalism and the National Museum of Mexican Art (NMMA), with whom we co-programmed throughout the quarter in events like our Opening Day Celebration, gallery talks, and the contemporary artists’ program América Now: Chicago Artists in Dialogue, facilitated by NMMA’s Sarita Hernández.
In Spring 2020, as Northwestern pivoted to remote learning and work, the Engagement Department adapted to the online environment by centering its focus on the museum’s permanent collection and its Student Docents. Docent's digital work researching the collection and continued online training offered the department key insights to begin modeling best practices for building community virtually and designing a fully remote Student Docent pilot program for the upcoming academic year.
In Summer 2020, as Engagement welcomed a new Associate Director of Campus and Community Education and Engagement at its helm, the department continued its In Winter 2020, through alignment with focus on the permanent collection and Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian growing interdisciplinary relationships Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey through teaching and learning on campus, Collection, Engagement was able to and in the community. foreground campus relationships and feature graduate students Maryam Athari, With live, online programs exploring Vidura Bahadur, Simran Bhalla, Özge objects in the collection with inquiryKaragöz, and Hamed Yousefi in programs based discussion, we collaborated with like the exhibition’s opening lectures and, new partners at the Feinberg School gallery talks. Additionally, throughout of Medicine’s Center for Health Equity Fall-Winter 2019-2020, Engagement Transformation and deepened existing actively continued training and leveraging relationships with Evanston and Y.O.U.’s its cohort of 23 Student Docents to grow High School Leadership Project to explore relationships with the Block’s many critical issues of health equity, race, audiences through tours of the museum’s gender, policing, and the experience of exhibitions and student-led Tales of Art at young people today. As the new academic the Block public programs. year approached, we sought advice from our senior Docents to launch an expanded
