Northwestern's Block Museum Closed for Repairs til January

The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art’s galleries, on the Evanston campus of Northwestern University, have been closed, and will remain closed through Northwestern’s fall quarter in order to make unexpected facility repairs.

The closure will affect the Block’s fall exhibition schedule. However, it is expected that the museum’s Pick-Laudati Auditorium will remain open for Block Cinema screenings, lectures, and Northwestern classes throughout the fall. The Museum’s galleries will reopen in January 2014.

The closing is the result of water damage to its main gallery and other spaces that were sustained when a pipe in the sprinkler system burst on Aug. 6.

The Block’s art collection was not damaged and Block staff removed the museum’s contents to off-site storage in order to protect its works of art during the period required to complete the review and repair of the building’s fire suppression system.

The exhibition “Steichen/Warhol: Picturing Fame,” drawn from two major gifts of art from Richard and Jackie Hollander and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, has been rescheduled for January, and will run through early April. “The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation,” on loan from Vassar College’s Francis Lehman Loeb Art Center, has been cancelled.