The Block Museum Honors 40 Years With A Thoughtful New Exhibit

The Block Museum honors 40 years with a thoughtful new exhibition that celebrates its beginnings.

Ron Adams’ “Blackburn” (2002) is featured in For One and All: Prints from The Block’s Collection.

Before the Block Museum was one of the North Shore’s leading cultural hubs—now housing over 6,000 artworks—it was a seedling institution that primarily focused on prints and photography. In honor of the Block’s 40th anniversary, new exhibition For One and All: Prints from the Block’s Collection showcases the museum’s foundations with a nod to its origins via more than 60 works by artists including Andy Warhol, Ed Paschke and Amy Sillman. “The focus on prints and printmaking in the exhibition and in the [Block’s] collection reinforces the museum’s ethos: free and open to all,” says Academic Curator Corinne Granof. “With a fairly small number of artworks, the exhibition is able to tell big stories about printmaking and how it has been foundational to visual culture for centuries.” The show also offers a moment to consider the technological and aesthetic innovations in printmaking and its tremendous impact on communication, journalism and activism, Granof notes. “Printmaking on a press is such a collaborative and magical process,” she adds. “It’s a way of working where the artwork is actually made in moments when the artist cannot see it as it runs through a press. The exhibition brings together a broad range of results—bold, understated, linear, painterly, representational and abstract.”

Regular visitors to the Block may recall a previous limited viewing of For One and All, which ran briefly in 2021. “We wanted to reinstall and share it with a wider audience,” says Granof of the decision to bring it back now. “The main themes are intact and represent three core aspects of printmaking: circulation, communication and collecting. There are old treasures, as well as new acquisitions…And while there are many more gems that aren’t on the walls, they can be explored in our fully digitized collection online.” Sept. 20-Dec. 3, 40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston