Histories related to a place are sometimes invisible and often overlooked. The Block Museum of Art, for example, sits on the traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires, the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa, as well as the Menominee, Miami, and Ho-Chunk nations. How do people assign meaning to place? How is history etched onto a landscape or erased from it?
Representations of landscapes almost always ask the viewer to adopt a position that is relative to the view the artist presents. The works of art in this section call on us to look beyond the surface to reveal complicated layers of personal, generational, and societal histories rooted in place.
These highlights were part of WHO SAYS, WHO SHOWS, WHAT COUNTS: Thinking about History with The Block’s Collection, a 2021 exhibition that explored how art, artists, and museums engage with narratives of the past. To learn more about other artworks and key themes in the exhibition, check out Reframing the Past, Institutions Critiqued, and Critical Portraits.
