Founded in 1980, The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University is an engine that drives questioning, experimentation, and collaboration across fields of study, with visual arts at the center. Located on Northwestern’s lakefront campus in Evanston, Illinois, The Block engages audiences from across the Chicago region and beyond with exhibitions, programs, and collection-based projects that spark critical thinking, creativity, and cross-disciplinary dialogue.

The Block Museum of Art activates art’s power as a form of insight, research, and knowledge creation that makes human experience visible and material. Fueled by a broad range of perspectives and ways of knowing, the museum creates shared encounters with art and with one another to deepen understandings of the world and our place within it.

A collection of over 6,000 works drives teaching and learning across the university, with strengths in works on paper, photography, modern and contemporary art, and global art across cultures and time periods. The collection sparks new scholarship and supports a rotating exhibition program grounded in the curriculum at Northwestern.

The Block presents modern and contemporary art as well as historical and cross-cultural projects that connect global artistic practice to pressing issues and histories. Welcoming over 40,000 visitors each year, many exhibitions emerge from original research and are developed in collaboration with artists, scholars, students, and community partners.

Through exhibitions, Block Cinema film screenings, performances, and public programs, The Block invites visitors to look closely, think deeply, and engage with art and ideas—always free and open to all.