The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University presents a slate of exhibitions that bring the museum’s collection into renewed focus. Committed to interdisciplinary research, student engagement and curatorial rigor, The Block draws on its growing collection to pose timely questions about authorship, memory and the role of art in making meaning. With each project, the museum affirms the distinctive potential of academic art museums to serve as spaces for inquiry, connection and sustained reflection.

Fall 2025

Pouring, Spilling, Bleeding: Helen Frankenthaler and Artists’ Experiments on Paper

Sept. 17 – Dec. 14, 2025

This fall, The Block presents “Pouring, Spilling, Bleeding: Helen Frankenthaler and Artists’ Experiments on Paper,” an exhibition that explores how artists have used printmaking – and works on paper more broadly – as a site for experimentation, improvisation and aesthetic risk. The exhibition centers on the pioneering print practice of Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), whose lithographs, etchings and woodcuts reflect a dynamic, process-oriented approach which she described as “pouring, flooding, spilling, bleeding.”

The exhibition debuts a gift of 34 works from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, part of the Frankenthaler Prints Initiative, which supports university museums through the donation of prints and working proofs along with funding for interpretation and public engagement. At The Block, this gift is presented in dialogue with over 30 works from the museum’s collection by artists who similarly embraced chance, accident and aesthetic surprise – including Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, David Smith, John Cage, Kikuo Saito, Lynda Benglis, Amy Sillman and Max Gimblett.

Curated by Stephanie S. E. Lee, 2024-25 Block Museum graduate fellow in art history, and Corinne Granof, academic curator, the exhibition draws on in-depth research, including time spent in the Frankenthaler Foundation archives. A full suite of working proofs for “Divertimento” (1983) highlights Frankenthaler’s collaborative printmaking process and her openness to visual discovery.

Winter/Spring 2026

Working title: “Photography in Mali: Hamdia Traoré’s Marabouts of Jenne in Context

Feb. 4 – June 14, 2026

Bamako-based photographer Hamdia Traoré captures the spiritual and scholarly legacy of Jenne, Mali – a city central to Islamic education since the 12th century. His series “Des Marabouts de Djenné (Marabouts of Jenne)” comprises 30 intimate portraits of marabouts, or Qur’anic teachers, each framed by personal tools and sacred spaces.

The exhibition places Traoré’s work in dialogue with mid-20th-century portraits by Malian photographers Mamadou Cissé, Abdourahmane Sakaly and Tijani Sitou, drawn from the Archive of Malian Photography. These historical images lend visual resonance and deepen the conversation around representation, identity and spiritual authority in Mali.

The exhibition is curated by Kathleen Bickford Berzock, associate director of curatorial affairs, in collaboration with the artist and Candace Keller, co-founder of the Archive of Malian Photography.

Working title: “Teresa Montoya: Tó Łitso (Yellow Water)

Feb. 4 – June 14, 2026

Marking the 10th anniversary of the Gold King Mine spill, “Tó Łitso (Yellow Water)” retraces the toxic path of mine waste through Navajo Nation waterways. Chicago-based artist and anthropologist Teresa Montoya (Diné) weaves together photography, sound recordings, water samples and cartographic data to examine the lasting presence of environmental contamination and its effects on Indigenous communities.

Montoya’s images, taken during a 2016 road trip from Silverton, Colorado, to Shiprock, New Mexico, evoke the haunting beauty and quiet violence of environmental harm. Framing water as both life-sustaining and politically charged, the exhibition calls attention to extractive land-use practices and centers Indigenous knowledge, resilience and visual sovereignty.

Through Montoya’s interdisciplinary practice, the exhibition becomes a meditation on cultural memory and environmental justice in America and beyond.

The exhibition is curated by Berzock.

The Living Room at The Block

Beginning September 2025

Launching in fall 2025, The Living Room is a new initiative at The Block Museum of Art that invites visitors to experience art one work at a time. Designed as a student-centered drop-in space, The Living Room features a single artwork from the museum’s collection each month, alongside interpretive prompts and participatory materials developed by Block Museum Student Associates.

In an era of fast-paced scrolling and competing demands, The Living Room encourages visitors to slow down, look closely and connect – whether through conversation, quiet reflection or creative engagement. Fall presentations include works by Igshaan Adams, Ken Fandell and Dyani White Hawk.

The Living Room reflects The Block’s broader commitment to making art accessible and relevant to campus life. “It encourages students to see the museum as a place for ideas, inquiry and belonging – not just during class, but throughout their time at the University,” says Lisa Corrin, Ellen Philips Katz Executive Director.

The Block Museum of Art

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