The blue walls surrounding a group of students chatting and drawing at a table in the center of the main gallery of Northwestern’s Block Museum of Art were covered with the framed and yellowed drawings of Italian artists, including Michelangelo.
“It’s not often you have the opportunity to do work in a space like this,” said Zach Pino, glancing around at the exhibit From Michelangelo to Annibale Carracci: A Century of Italian Drawings from the Prado. Pino, a 21-year-old Rogers Park resident, was substituting for his mother, a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and leading the informal drawing class open to all NU students.
The class was part of the free Block In event Friday night from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Block Museum, 40 Arts Circle Drive. In addition to the sketching class, the event highlighted the Italian drawings and Polaroids: Mapplethorpe exhibits with food, live violin music from a School of Music graduate student and even a temporary tattoo station.
About 100 students passed through the museum for the event, walking past Mapplethorpe’s photography, trying their hands at imitating famous Italian sketches, eating gnocchi or bruschetta and chatting over the background music.
Sheetal Prajapati, director of educational programs at the museum, stood by the entrance, welcoming students who entered. Toward the end of the event she stood talking with one of the museum’s student employees and called the event a success.
“Those are probably 100 students who wouldn’t have come for the exhibitions otherwise,” she said.
Prajapati attended NU as an undergraduate but rarely stepped inside the Block Museum. She said she knew little about the museum and saw it more as an institution for others rather than existing for the undergraduate population.
Prajapati said she suspected current undergraduates share the perception of Block that she had. Block In was held to draw students, especially undergraduates, to the museum and make them feel welcome.
“This is Northwestern’s museum, and we want students coming here and enjoying what we have to offer,” she said.
Weinberg sophomore Cara Gagliano attended the event with a friend and was writing down the information of a sketch by artist Jacopo Zanguidi to share with her Italian class. Gagliano had visited the Block Museum once before in January when musician and artist Patti Smith visited for the screening of her biopic.
“I don’t think enough people know about the Block Museum,” she said. “That’s why events like this are good.”
The museum’s staff has been making more of an effort to attract the student population on campus over the past year, Prajapati said. For this winter’s Block In, they partnered with the student-run Northwestern Art Review and the campus fashion magazine STITCH to help publicize the event.
“The museum is really trying to find interesting ways to engage the undergraduate population here, and this event is an example of one of the ways,” Prajapati said. “We’re moving ahead with more planning.”
