Curatorial

The 2020/21 Academic Year required all of us at The Block Museum to embrace the moment.

In the curatorial department this meant pivoting from our long-planned onsite activities—exhibitions, gallery tours, film programs, and student-focused initiatives— to new virtual and hybrid formats that pushed us to think differently about engaging with artworks and communities. This transition likewise led us to pose new questions about our work: what does a virtual curatorial program look like? What does it mean to experience art through electronic tools? How can we connect with students, faculty, and wider audiences virtually? And, most pressingly, what is needed in this moment and what do we have to give?

Among our earliest initiatives was offering virtual class visits focused on works in The Block’s collection to support Northwestern faculty and students. We were surprised to discover unexpected opportunities for close looking in virtual space that took us deeper into the details of artworks than is possible with in person looking. Building on these experiences we also offered 30-minute lunchtime curatorial talks on works in The Block’s collection and shared “Curator Picks” through the museum’s social media inspired by what was on our minds, from caring for our neighbors, to political expression, to the experience of solitude.

Block graduate fellows Rikki Byrd and Bethany Hill extended our investigation into how virtual tools can accentuate looking at artworks with their creation of a virtual learning tool, “Margaret Burroughs ‘Mother and Child’: A Closer Look”. This resource will be a model for future deep dives into select artworks through student-led research. In the Spring, graduate fellow Rikki Byrd also innovated a new exhibition format for The Block with Behold, Be Held, using the museum’s windows, as well as those of our neighbor, The Ethel M. Barber Theater, and our community partner, Evanston’s Youth Opportunity United (Y.O.U.), to display large-scale reproductions of artwork from The Block’s collection, each reflecting on how art holds us in times of crisis.

Our widest reach happened through our online cinema programs, including Liberating Histories: Arab Feminisms and Mediated Pasts, featuring five screenings that drew in hundreds of viewers from around the world. The experience of connecting with worldwide audiences through new online platforms undoubtedly will continue to impact our work going forward. None-the-less, we felt deeply the import of connecting in physical space with a limited campus audience during the pandemic through our onsite exhibition For One and All: Prints from The Block’s Collection, a project that also had an expanded online presence. Reflecting on a challenging year, deep gratitude remains for the presence of art in our lives and for the abiding connections with community near and far that it allows us to forge.

– Kathleen Bickford Berzock

Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs