Message from the Director

Dear Block Supporters, Colleagues and Friends,

The 2020-2021 academic year marked The Block Museum’s 40th anniversary.

In celebration of this milestone, Northwestern students, University staff, the Block Board of Advisors, and the many communities we serve embraced this opportunity to reflect on our role as an academic art museum and how we activate what art does in the world. We have also focused on our responsibility in shaping narratives of history. How can we challenge the visibility of some histories at the expense of others? How can the collection be an essential campus and community resource and a catalyst for conversation about the urgent issues of our day? These lines of inquiry sharpened our collecting priorities. We have developed a new collecting strategy and are encouraging gifts and support for acquisitions that diversify our holdings. Through the generosity of many of you, we accessioned more than 550 works of art over the last three years, each selected to amplify teaching by embracing history’s complexities and contradictions.

The Block’s mission statement describes us as a place in which art is a “springboard” for discussions of issues and ideas that are timely and significant to our lives. Throughout the last year we also grappled with the meaning and potential of this “springboard” idea.

At times, the resilience and creativity of the Block team has found us confidently springing forward. We landed on new ways of thinking about our work as a dynamic and responsive site of inquiry and experimentation, and new ways of holding space where you can have moving experiences with complex works of art.

At other times, our footing was less sure. The events of the year and quarantine closure catapulted us ahead towards topics that challenged our assumptions of art and of museums, into difficult conversations, and into a reckoning with our institutional identity and responsibilities in the face of racial and societal inequity. Nevertheless, in both confidence and in uncertainty, we sprang forward. It’s clear there is no “springing back” to where we were before.

In Spring of 2020 as we marked one-year of pandemic upheaval, I asked the Block team what still excited them in our work and what gave them hope about our future. The team

expressed passionate belief in the Block’s continued opportunity to deepen and broaden our impact now and in the future. We cited all we learned during this challenging year; teaching a new online course and supporting faculty using the collection remotely; organizing Zoom workshops; reshaping our core student engagement programs with student input, and hosting digital film screenings with powerful live discussions. Our work as a catalyst for making meaning has never been more important. From projects on our building facade, to Student Associates programs on our Zoom screens, from the galleries of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art, to the windows of Y.O.U—Evanston’s youth services organization—The Block's work this past year has been expansive - and deep partnerships enabled extraordinary new endeavors and educational impact. We are deeply grateful for your support as we continue to explore what the Block is and what it can be. Thank you for helping us to be a space where art is a catalyst for transformation, conversation, and connection.

"

Our work as a catalyst for making meaning has never been more important.

"

– Lisa Graziose Corrin,

Ellen Philips Katz Director, The Block Museum of Art