The Block Museum of Art hosted a One Book One Northwestern Online Collection Talk on Thursday to connect literary themes in “The Night Watchman” by Louise Erdrich with different forms of artwork.
This is the museum’s fifth year of partnering with One Book. The talk was one of several organized webinars in their partnership.
“It’s such a rich opportunity to connect text and artwork and think about literature and art,” said Corinne Granof, the Block’s academic curator. “It opens up so many questions and so many possibilities that it’s just something we really like doing every year.”
For the webinar led by Granof, the Block compiled a One Book packet that consisted of different artworks within the museum’s permanent collection that curators thematically connected to “The Night Watchman.”
The webinar focused on one particular piece in the packet: “Speed-up,” a 1936 lithograph created by American artist Claire Mahl Moore.
Moore created her piece in a print shop set up by the Federal Art Project, a New Deal program to fund art programs during the Great Depression. She said the piece illustrates women laborers and explores the exploitative nature of labor under capitalism.
During Thursday’s event, Granof related the piece to Patrice Paranteau, one of the novel’s protagonists, who works in a jewel-bearing plant on the Turtle Mountain Reservation.
Granof said Erdrich’s setting description of the factory stuck with her throughout the book and set the scene for when the taxing work environment became apparent to Patrice.
“Thinking about the book and the texts together and to pair an image from the plant with print, there’s a real sympathy of ethos between Louise Erdrich and her book and Claire Moore, as well as other printmakers of the WPA or the Federal Art Project who are really concerned with issues of labor justice, fairness and exploitation in the workplace,” Granof said.
Other themes in “The Night Watchman” include the plight of Native Americans, reservations, class, community organizing, tradition, identity and Indigenous knowledge, which were highlighted through other artworks in the packet.
“Claire Moore did do a lot of works that were about injustice, racial injustice, and some of them have a very expressionistic inflection,” Granof said.
In selecting the artwork for their One Book packet, the curatorial department at the Block began having discussions last spring. They first read the novel and gathered a preliminary group of artworks that related to themes in the book.
The department then met with colleagues to finalize the 10 artworks highlighted in the packet.
The Block’s Engagement Coordinator Isabella Ko assisted in the final stage of picking the artworks. She said the format of virtual programming and distributable packets makes the Block’s events more accessible.
“This is one way, through the One Book packet and through this series, that we can highlight what’s in our permanent collection, even if you can’t necessarily see it in the galleries,” Ko said.
There will be two other One Book collection talks this year by the Block, including one in January, focusing on Shan Goshorn’s Cherokee Burden Basket: Singing a Song for Balance.
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