QUARANTINE PICKS
This week: Artists and curators on global connection
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Each week a member of The Block's team offers selections that resonate with them at this moment. Today Kathleen Bickford Berzock, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs writes:
"Separated physically from my neighbors, family, colleagues, and friends, I wonder at my simultaneous connections with people near and far via digital platforms. My sense of time and of space have contracted and expanded in the same moment. What does it mean to be together at this time? As families and households, communities, countries, and our world navigate a global health crisis, I am drawn to the work of artists and curators who help me to see the synergies between the local and the global in new ways and who invite me to consider our connections across time and place. Here are three of my favorites from The Block archive."
1. Visual Vanguard: Bisi Silva (April 6, 2017)
2. Kader Attia: Opening Day Program (January 21, 2017)
3. Artist Talk: Counter-Histories with Michael Rakowitz (February 13, 2019)
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BLOCK STORIES
The Block Docent Diaries: Finding Inspiration
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The Block Museum docent program is made up of students from across Northwestern University who serve as the museum’s tour guides and ambassadors. In Spring 2020, the program continues online as students connect with one another, research objects in the collection, and help us look toward the future of the museum. We reached out to this team to ask: What art, music, or culture is inspiring you right now outside of your work at The Block?
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BLOCK NEWS
Caravans of Gold Launches Online at National Museum of African Art
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The Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art (NMAfA) in Washington DC is the final location of The Block's exhibition Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time. While we await the public opening our colleagues at NMAfA have launched a digital tour of the exhibition on their website.
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ONLINE EVENT
Badnam Basti (Alley of Ill Repute) (1971) – Screening and Discussion
TONIGHT, THURSDAY, MAY 7, 7 PM CST, FREE
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Join Block Cinema for a special live stream broadcast of Prem Kapoor's Badnam Basti (Alley of Ill Repute) followed by an online discussion with Simran Bhalla (PhD candidate in Screen Cultures, Northwestern University) and Sudhir Mahadevan (Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle). Badnam Basti is considered one of the first Indian films to explore queer relationships. Although the film was recut and rereleased in 1978, it has since faded into obscurity; until recently, the film was presumed lost.
Presenting a new digital transfer from the only known 35mm print, this event may mark the first time this film has been screened for US audiences.
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ONLINE EVENT
Highlights from the NYU Grey Art Gallery’s Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art
MONDAY, MAY 11, 6 PM EST / 5PM CST, FREE
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This Monday, the NYU Grey Art Gallery offers a live webinar "Highlights from the NYU Grey Art Gallery’s Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art." Join the Grey's Director Lynn Gumpert and Michèle Wong, Head of Exhibitions and Collections, in a discussion and virtual tour of the highlights of this unparalleled and unique collection. The Block has been proud to have selections from this collection on loan with the exhibition Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection.
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Counting for culture: How the census impacts arts funding
Kerry Cardoza, May 5, 2020
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The Chicago Reader spoke with Block Museum Director Lisa Corrin on the importance of the census to the arts and the crucial role of state arts funding:
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"With the state Arts Council funding, you begin to be able to leverage in order to demonstrate capacity to do things at the level of 'Caravans of Gold,'" she says. "That Arts Council funding also shows that we have support in our community for this work, right?...It's very important, it's as important through the message it sends as the dollars it gives."
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