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Exhibitions and Collections Report

Robert Rauschenberg (American, 1925–2008) L.A. Uncovered #12 1998 Color screenprint on paper 40 1/2 × 30 11/16 inches Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of James and Margie Krebs 2019.19.6

2019-20 was a transformative year for The Block Museum, in ways both planned and unexpected.

The Block’s very talented exhibitions and collections department helped the museum navigate this uniquely challenging year. Sticking to the goals that we had long set out, as well as pivoting in new directions, allowed our team to accomplish many things – along with some unexpected results.

The Block’s exhibitions and collections team has always been about building strong collaborations and partnerships but this past year was remarkable for both sweep and scope. This included wonderful partner organizations that we had the chance to work with through our global exhibition program. Caravans of Gold, our traveling exhibition that originated at The Block, crossed international borders to the amazing Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Canada. Returning stateside, the exhibition was slated to open at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. when, half-way through the installation, the global pandemic necessitated a temporary shutdown of the install. Working from home and with our Smithsonian partners, we found a way to keep the exhibition viable after a moderate delay, and several of us acted as “virtual” couriers, overseeing every aspect of the exhibition’s completion. This truly marked a new way of doing our traditional work– activities for which we would normally need to be physically present.

Other partners this past year included the Nasher at Duke University, from where we borrowed Pop América, as well as the Grey Art Gallery, from where we borrowed Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights.

Delivering on our promise of increased access to our Collections, our team continued to work in close partnership with The Block’s curatorial department toward the culmination of a four year project to fully convert our collection database, photograph each object in our collection and digitize their records, as well as launch the exciting, highly interactive and external-facing eMuseum platform. eMuseum is an invitation to the public that holds the promise of making our collections open and searchable in a whole new way. In order for this program to be meaningful and robust, an incredible amount of data entry, cataloging, and object review had to take place.

As our team helped race to the finish line for a Fall 2020 launch, it became clear that this “all hands on deck” moment was only possible because of the flexibility and dedication that our team members demonstrated especially in the work-from-home environment. Staff members trained in the handling of physical objects were able to pivot, seamlessly, to the digital world of databases and files. This would be an impressive feat, in any circumstances, let alone when coupled with the other challenges we all faced this past year.

While there may be no true silver linings during a global pandemic—the toll and upheaval is just too great—the museum has found that there can, and must, be new ways of approaching our work. – Dan Silverstein,

Associate Director of Collections and Exhibition Management

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