The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University presents "Picturing the Modern Metropolis: Prints and Photographs from The Block's Collection," on view Wednesday, Sept. 9 through Sunday, Dec. 6. Bringing together more than 100 works focused primarily on the 20th century, the exhibition examines how artists pictured the scale, speed, diversity and shared public life of the growing American city.
The exhibition includes works by internationally renowned artists Christo, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol and celebrated photographers Edward Steichen, W. Eugene Smith, Vivian Meier and Brett Weston among many others. Reflecting The Block's deep ties to Chicago, it also features extensive selections by Bronislaw M. Bak and Henry Simon, along with works by Yuichi Idaka, Nathan Lerner, Richard Nickel, Aaron Siskind and other artists connected to the city's Institute of Design.
In the 20th century, industry, commerce, migration and culture contributed to an expansion of urban life in the U.S. Artists were drawn to the city as a subject, highlighting aspects of the urban environment from spectacular skylines and lively streets to neon signs and weathered walls. They also developed new visual languages to express the sensory experience of the metropolis. Oblique viewpoints, fragmentation, abstraction, double exposure and dramatic effects of light and movement transformed familiar surroundings into sites of experimentation.
This experimentation extended to the moving image, represented in the exhibition by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler's landmark 1921 film "Manhatta," presented in the gallery in a digital restoration made from the only known surviving 35mm print.
"This exhibition offers a chance to see the breadth of The Block's collection through a subject that artists returned to again and again," said Corinne Granof, academic curator at The Block and co-curator of the exhibition. "Together, these works show how artists found new visual possibilities in the city and helped shape the ways we continue to imagine urban life."
Organized in three thematic sections, "Picturing the Modern Metropolis" moves from panoramic skylines and monumental infrastructure to the public life of the street and the visual fragments embedded in the city's surfaces. Across photography, printmaking and drawing, artists approached Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh as places of mobility, discovery and individual expression. For some who came to the U.S. in response to war, persecution or political upheaval, the city also represented the possibility of beginning again.
"Many of these artists learned about the city by moving through it and looking closely," said Eduardo Bello, 2025-2026 Block Museum interdisciplinary graduate fellow and co-curator of the exhibition. "Their images show modernity taking shape through everyday encounters, educational institutions and local creative communities. Seen together, the works make the metropolis feel less like a fixed subject than a visual experience continually made and remade."
Exhibition programs
Exhibition Keynote: "'The Modern Metropolis' & Images of the City"
Wednesday, Sept. 30, 6 to 7:30 p.m.
Public programming kicks off with a talk by photography historian Greg Foster-Rice of Columbia College Chicago on the relationship between picture-making and lived urban experience.
"Our Changing City: The Obama Presidential Center"
Friday, Oct. 9, 12:30 to 2 p.m.
During Northwestern's Homecoming and Reunion Weekend, journalist Natalie Moore, director of audio journalism at Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications, will discuss the newly opened Obama Presidential Center and its impact on Chicago's architectural and racial landscape with Northwestern history professor Leslie M. Harris.
Curator's Talk: "Modernity in the Making"
Thursday, Oct. 22, 3:30 to 4:30 p.m.
Co-curator Bello will lead an in-gallery discussion about the exhibition.
Curator's Talk: "All the Noise and the Hurry"
Thursday, Nov. 5, 3:30 to 4:30 p.m.
Co-curator Granof will lead an in-gallery conversation about the exhibition.
Block Cinema: "Chicago: First Impressions of a Great American City" (1961)
Thursday, Nov. 5, 7 p.m.
Block Cinema presents a newly rediscovered print of Denis Mitchell's impressionistic BBC documentary portrait of Chicago, its first screening in 60 years.
"Vacant Stares: Adrienne Brown on Rethinking Emptiness"
Wednesday, Nov. 11, 6 to 7:30 p.m.
Adrienne Brown, professor in the departments of English and race, diaspora and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago, will present her current research on reimagining urban emptiness.
