Sculpture

In 1987, Leigh Block, one of the Museum's inaugural donors and a preeminent collector of modern art, bequested a large group of bronze sculptures to the Museum, along with an endowment for their maintenance. The works by such artists as Jean Arp, Barbara Hepworth, Joán Miró, and Henry Moore constitute the core of the Museum’s Outdoor Sculpture Garden. A map of the Sculpture Garden map (PDF) is available here and at the Museum.

Block Museum docents lead free tours of the Sculpture Garden Sundays at 2 pm through August 24. Tours begin outside the Museum entrance.

An integral part of the Museum’s indoor and outdoor environments, the sculpture collection allows us to extend our dialogue beyond the two-dimensional works on paper upon which we focus our collections and exhibitions. The sculpture collection has helped shape our recent summer programming, with our popular Sculpture Garden tours and such exhibitions as the White House Collection of American Crafts in 2003 and 2005’s Sculpting in Glass. The original collection has also inspired further donations to the Museum, including a grouping of prints by sculptors like Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore.

In addition, the Museum has a permanent gallery dedicated to the work of textile artist Theo Leffmann. The exhibitions are rotated biannually, drawn from the Museum’s holding of more than seventy sculptural works and wall hangings by Leffmann, gifts of Paul H. Leffmann. The collections are also available for study.

To make an appointment to view works from our collection, contact Senior Curator Debora Wood at 847.491.4000, fax 847.491.2261, or email block-museum@northwestern.edu. Portions of our permanent collection is also searchable online.