Urban historian Lewis Mumford noted “the city creates the theater and is the theater”. Picturing the Modern Metropolis: Prints and Photographs from The Block's Collection provides the opportunity to revisit his correlation of the city with theater by examining images of the city as theatrical stills. In this talk, Greg Foster-Rice, co-curator of The City Lost and Found: Capturing New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, 1960-1980 (Art Institute of Chicago, 2015) will explore key images and themes from the Block Museum of Art’s current exhibition. How are cities fundamentally about the act of seeing and being seen? And what, therefore, is the role of picture-making in both reflecting and shaping the actual lived experience of the city?
About the speaker:
Greg Foster-Rice is Full Professor of the History of Photography and Associate Provost for Student Success Initiatives at Columbia College Chicago. He curated The Many Hats of Ralph Arnold: Art, Identity & Politics, which opened at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in 2018. For that exhibition, Foster-Rice edited and co-authored a scholarly catalogue of essays surveying Arnold’s extensive career. Previously he co-curated The City Lost and Found: Capturing New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, 1960-1980 at the Art Institute of Chicago (2014) and Princeton University Art Museum (2015) and co-authored that exhibition’s catalogue which received the Philip Johnson Award from the Society of Architectural Historians in 2015. He has a BA from Rice University and a PhD in Art History from Northwestern University.
Image credits: Henry Simon (American, born Poland, 1901 - 1995), Untitled (Wacker Drive and West Madison (old Chicago Daily News building in reflection)), ca. 1960. Photograph, 10 in x 9 in. Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of Norbert Simon and David Simon, 1997.28.96. Courtesy of the estate of Henry Simon.
Yuichi Idaka (Japanese-American, 1914 - 2012), Untitled, ca. 1946. Gelatin silver print, 20.6 × 25.4 cm. Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of the Bauhaus Chicago Foundation, 2024.21.7. Courtesy of the Estate of Yuichi Idaka.
Cost: Free and open to the public
Block Museum of Art
(847) 491-4000
Email