Engagement & Partners

2020-21 NORTHWESTERN PROGRAMMING PARTNERS

• Center for Health Equity Transformation • Feinberg School of Medicine • McCormick School of Engineering • New Student and Family Programs • Northwestern Alumni Association • Office of Residential Academic Initiatives • Sexual Health and Assault Peer Educators (SHAPE), • Center for Awareness, Response and Education • Office of Student Affairs • Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center for the

Performing Arts • The Black Arts Consortium • The Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities • The Graduate School • Northwestern Hillel

Despite the many new challenges and trauma brought by the COVID-19 global pandemic, 2020-2021 was a year of growth for the Engagement Department.

We spent our year working with campus and community partners almost entirely remotely – removed from the physical spaces and objects that have traditionally characterized our work. We needed to think creatively and expansively about our values, our priorities, and our work, and how the Block Museum can extend beyond our physical walls.

We refocused on our work with Northwestern students. In Fall 2020, we piloted a reimaging of our Student Docent program. Building on the group’s existing strengths in museum education and facilitation, our students expanded their role to include serving as peer ambassadors on campus, student advisors for all levels of museum staff, and as shapers of the museum’s collection itself by working with our Curatorial colleagues to acquire Leonard Suryajaya’s Quarantine Blues (2020). In addition to our work with our own Block Museum student community, we grew and strengthened relationships with campus offices, staff, and student organizations, including nearly a dozen new collaborations and partnerships across disciplines.

Our work with Evanston deepened as well. In conjunction with our upcoming exhibition A Site of Struggle: American Art Against Anti-Black Violence, we convened a group of Evanston community advisors. Together, we considered what it means to present this exhibition at Northwestern and in Evanston, how best to extend care and support for visitors, and to generate ideas for community-driven public programs. We expanded our partnership with Youth and Opportunity United (Y.O.U.) with a year of programming focused on object-based discussion and creative activities linking objects in our collection with themes of policing, body image, beauty ideals, equity, racial justice, and the school to prison pipeline. This work manifested in Behold, Be Held, the Block’s first outdoor exhibition, curated by Graduate Student Fellow Rikki Byrd, which explored ideas of self-care, agency, and community. Our high school student collaborators in Y.O.U.’s Leadership Project worked with Byrd to select works for installation in the windows of their building in Evanston, and on the windows of the Block Museum.

We found that the shift to online public programming allowed us to reach new partners and new audiences. Online public programming brought nearly 1,000 guests from near and far to the Block, and opened up unexpected opportunities for dialogue. Programming highlights included a series of collection-based talks to explore issues in Just Mercy, Northwestern’s One Book selection for 2020-2021, student-led dialogues linking objects together around a common and sometimes unexpected theme, and a conversation with national museum directors on institutional leadership today, and what is needed next. In addition to these public events, we offered private programs for new partners, including the Center for Aphasia at Shirley Ryan Ability Lab, Arts of Life, and the student organization, Sexual Health and Assault Prevention Education (S.H.A.P.E.).

2020-2021 saw growth within the Engagement Department as well – we were delighted to welcome América Salomón, former Engagement Coordinator, into a new role as our firstManager of Public Programs and have already benefited from her leadership and vision in this work.

We are excited to carry forward the lessons we learned as we prepare to reopen our doors, and as we think together next year about how art, artists, and museums explore ideas of history and help us to envision new futures.

– Erin Northington

Susan and Stephen Wilson Associate Director, Campus and Community Education and Engagement

REFLECTIONS ON THE BLOCK MUSEUM STUDENT DOCENT PROGRAM

The Block Docent program has taken this strange year as an opportunity to reframe and recenter our work at the museum. This has involved adapting our work to a virtual format through online Art Talks and trying our hand at new aspects of museum work such as writing labels and acquiring a piecefor the Block’s collection. Each of these assignments gave the Docents autonomy to craft something that is truly theirs whether that is a one hundred-fifty word label or a thirty-minute tour of two works from the collection. The acquisition took this to another level as the Docents collaborated to think about what kind of work would be important to add to the collection. The piece they chose will remain in the collection as a lasting testament to the impact this year’s Docents had on the Block community.

Outside of these tangible accomplishments, another core element of the Docent program has been an increased focus on community building. The Docent team is made up of a wide variety of students from different majors and communities on campus. Through activities, conversations, and meaningful shared space, this group became a unit joined through shared passions and mutual respect. This community building was further enhanced in conversations about social justice and identity with Social Justice Education andbiweekly meetings with different members of the Block team. These meetings made space for a critical and thoughtful examination of what it means to work in an academic artmuseum.

As we bid farewell to the Docents who are graduating and turn our attention to next year’s return to in-person programming, this year will be remembered as an important next step in the growth and development of the Block Docent program as the Docents became an even more essential part of the Block’s work.

– Erin Claeys '21

Docent Coordinator

STUDENT DOCENTS 2020-2021

Ayinoluwa Abegunde

Major in Chemical Engineering (2022)

Fiona Asokacitta

Major in History and Art History, minor in Anthropology (2021)

Erin Claeys, Docent Coordinator

Major in Legal Studies and Theatre in the Playwriting Module (2021)

Claire Corridon

Major in American Studies and Political Science (2021)

Karan Gowda

Major in Biological Sciences (2022)

Chayda Harding

Major in History (2022)

Brianna Heath

Major in Art History, Minor in African American Studies (2021)

Hyohee Kim

Major in Learning Sciences and Asian American Studies (2022)

Mina Malaz

Major in Art History and Psychology (2021)

Lennart Nielsen

Major in Theatre and International Studies, minor in Creative Writing (2021)

Giboom Joyce Park

Major in Political Science, History, and International Studies (2022)

Margeaux Rocco

Major Undecided and minor in Art Theory and Practice (2023)

Joely Simon

Major in Journalism, minor in Art History, Integrated Marketing Communications Certificate (2021)

Rory Kahiya Tsapayi

Major in Art History and Journalism (2021)

MEET THE 20-21 COHORT

Socially-distanced class visit

CLASS COLLECTION VISITS

SOCIOLOGY 101

Wendy Griswold, Sociology, “First-Year Seminar: Animals & Society,”10 students

ART HISTORY 250

Adrian Randolph, Art History, “Introduction to European Art, 1400–1800,” 45 students

CLASSICS 101

Ryan Platte, Classics, “First-Year Seminar, Ancient Greece and Rome in Modern Film Culture," 15 students

FRENCH 333

Cynthia Nazarian, “Topics in Renaissance Literature, Montaigne and Modernity,” 6 students

SOCIOLOGY 206

Joanna Grisinger, Legal Studies / Sociology, “Law and Society,” 7 sections, ~200 students

FRENCH 322

Christopher Davis, French, “Medieval Travel Narratives,” ~12 students

SOCIOLOGY 376

Renee Shelby, “Sexuality, Technoscience, and Law,” ~12 students

GERMAN 201

Denise Meuser, “Focus Reading – Art in the Modern Age,” ~8 students

ART HISTORY 460

Soyini Madison and Omi Jones, “Black Art in Anti-Black Worlds” ~12 students

ART HISTORY 390

Hamed Yousefi, “Modern Art and Spiritual Thought,” ~12 students

ART, THEORY AND PRACTICE 390

Printmaking: R & R (Relief, Relief; Repeat), Brendan Fernandes; Shabtai Pinchevsky, TA ~8 students

SOCIOLOGY 392

Kat Albrecht, “Sociology of Fear,” ~15 students

Sept-Oct 2020

Three online orientation programs and drop-in virtual office hours for Northwestern Students. Various dates; attendance ~15 students

Nov 2 and Dec 7, 2020

Two-part online private program and art making with Y.O.U.’s Leadership Project on policing, body image, and identity. 15 students each session. K-12 program (ETHS high school).

Dec 3

Online Just Mercy program for the Shirley Ryan Ability lab. 45 visitors.

Feb 22, March 8, March 22, May 10

Three online sessions with Y.O.U.’s Leadership Project for the selection and interpretation of Block collection objects for Behold, Be Held. 15 students each session. In-person socially distanced wrap-up/ celebration on May 10. K-12 program (ETHS high school).

March 23 and April 27

Two online sessions for Arts of Life. 25 visitors each session.

May 24

Student docent-led online program for NU student leaders of SHAPE (Sexual Health and Assault Prevention Educators). 15 NU students.

Corinne Granof, Academic Curator leads online class session