Image: Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Evanston
The Block Museum of Art and Northwestern Athletics and Recreation are entering Reframe’s fourth academic year, a collaboration that brings them together around works of art. This fall, The Living Room at The Block features artworks selected by Northwestern student-athletes, coaches, and staff through The Block’s ongoing partnership with Northwestern Athletics and Recreation.
More than 100 student-athletes, coaches, administrators, and campus partners helped shape the presentation, which features four works selected from The Block’s collection. The partnership is described as the nation’s only sustained partnership between an academic art museum and an athletics program, foregrounding student-athletes’ perspectives.
Looking closely gives participants a way to discuss the expectations of their sport, the identities they carry beyond athletics, and shared experiences of leadership, teamwork, and vulnerability. Each selection is accompanied by prompts connecting art with experiences of teamwork, leadership, and identity. Reframe was developed in partnership with former Wildcat student-athlete and artist Dwight White II, with The Block and Northwestern Athletics designing art-centered programming that includes a self-guided teaching resource and discussion guide based on works from the museum’s collection.
A conversation with Northwestern Athletics staff members Demetrius Fields, Director of Player Engagement for Football, and Maria Sanchez, Senior Associate Athletic Director for Strategic Impact, Leadership, and Student Engagement, is inspired by Kachelle Knowles’s ‘Old People Drink At The Bar, Young People Drink in The Streets’ and will consider how friendship, ease, and rest shape expressions of masculinity within and beyond athletics. ‘Old People Drink At The Bar, Young People Drink in The Streets’ will be on view from Wednesday, October 28, through Sunday, November 15.
An earlier Reframe training focused on Deborah Roberts’s ‘She’s Mighty, Mighty’ (2017), sparking conversations on gender, race, mental health, and teamwork both on and off the field.
