EXHIBITION PUBLICATION

WHO SAYS, WHO SHOWS, WHAT COUNTS: Thinking

About History with The Block’s Collection

Paperback

ISBN: 9781732568426

Published: October 2021

Northwestern University Press 144 Pages, 9.75 x 7.00 in

Who Says, Who Shows, What Counts: Thinking about History with The Block’s Collection invites readers to think critically about how artists, artworks, and museums engage with narratives of the past. Highlighting more than fifty contemporary artworks recently acquired by the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, the book considers our constantly changing understanding of the past through the lens of artistic practice.

Richly illustrated and written for a general audience, this book is a companion publication to the 2021 exhibition of the same name, presented to celebrate the museum’s fortieth anniversary. Consisting of contributions by students, faculty, Block curators, and Northwestern staff from across the University community, fifty short essays reflect the perspectives of more than twenty different academic departments

EXHIBITION — FALL 2021

SKY HOPINKA:

Cloudless Blue Egress of Summer

Katz Gallery

September 22 - December 05, 2021

Presented as a complement to Who Says, Who Shows, What Counts, Cloudless Blue Egress of Summer, a two-channel video installation by the artist Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk/Pechanga, born 1984, Ferndale, WA), offered an immersive and elusive reckoning with histories of colonial violence and Indigenous resistance. The thirteen-minute work examines the history of the Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest fort in the continental United States.

As strands of sound, text, and image intersect across the two screens, Hopinka plays with the friction between them, asking the viewer to absorb narratives that evade the conventions of linear history. These juxtapositions expose the challenge of reconstructing the past from the incomplete fragments left behind in the archives of the colonizer. While pointedly addressing a traumatic legacy, Hopinka also uses the expressive possibilities of the digital image to open up new spaces of historical imagination, where unjust edifices dissolve to expose glimpses of breathtaking beauty and tranquility across an expansive canvas.

FILM SERIES — FALL 2021

Retelling Resistance

Block Cinema

Inspired by the exhibition Who Says, Who Shows, What Counts, Retelling Resistance explored the intersection of historical memory and radical imagination. The films in this series revisit early episodes in the struggle against colonial and cultural imperialism, from the first revolts against the Spanish administration in Cuba to the Haïtian Revolution. These filmmakers embrace anachronism over historical accuracy, collapsing the past and the present to invoke a revolutionary spirit that endures across centuries. Including rarely-screened landmarks of Third Cinema alongside daring new experiments in collective filmmaking, Retelling Resistance invited us to expand our conceptions of history, and to contemplate the struggles for justice and independence we still confront today.

550 New Works Acquired For 40th Anniversary

Faculty Essays From 21 Departments

MODERN LUXURY: Rethinking History (August 23, 2021)

“The works in this exhibition particularly express the way our collecting focus has evolved to think about global perspectives, to ensure that we have a collection that allows for us to have conversations about the complex world in which we live”

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: The Art Side of History: The Block Museum looks to the past in one of Fall's key exhibitions (October 1, 2021)

THE DAILY NORTHWESTERN: The Block Museum’s fall exhibition “Who Says, Who Shows, What Counts” questions historical narratives (October 5, 2021)

“Institutions are made of the people who run them, and collections are moral archives [...] Whenever a museum does an exhibition from its own collection, it seems to be a self-portrait of itself.”

THE DAILY NORTHWESTERN: Sky Hopinka’s “Cloudless Blue Egress of Summer” exhibition reckons with colonial violence, highlights Indigenous resistance (October 6, 2021)

“We’ve seen over the last several months, particularly in Canada, reckoning with the boarding school system with the discoveries that have been made [...] Sky’s work really addresses many of these questions and themes, and it’s a really powerful moment to be presenting this at The Block and to be creating these conversations.”

544 Visitors And Students In Facilitaed Tours

NEWCITY ART: Museums as Laboratories for Narrative Change: A Review of Who Says, What Shows, What Counts at the Block Museum (November 10, 2021)

"The work on display here successfully exhibits artists that use visual tropes in a way that decenters the Western canon to instead showcase voices and perspectives that have historically been left out... “Who Says, What Shows” reminds us that museums can thus serve as a laboratory for the next generation to rewrite history."

NEWCITY ART: The Friction of History: A Review of Sky Hopinka at the Block Museum (October 13, 2021)

SIXTY INCHES FROM CENTER: A Retelling of Contemporary Art History at The Block Museum (November 30, 2021)

"Before the advent of the camera, only the very wealthy could afford to commission a portrait of themselves. Even since the widespread availability of the photographic image, the types of people whose portraits hang in museums tend to be of a narrow demographic or have achieved a certain status."

MEDIUM / XIAO FARIA DA CUNHA: Private Memories in Art — Portraiture, Landscapes, and Historic Storytelling (January 20, 2022)

"In other words, “Who Says, Who Shows, What Counts” has proved that the most intimate human moments are just as powerful as the loudest public advocacy. Therefore, from here on, fret not if your art doesn’t seem to be “relevant, provocative, and advocating.” The loudest statements often tread in the most silent footsteps. And as time goes by, our art is what will speak for us and tell our stories."