Two Chicago-area collegiate museums are using photography this season to explore how images shape cultural memory.
One museum introduces local audiences to a contemporary artist from Mali, and the other reflects on five decades of collecting closer to home.
At Northwestern University’s Block Museum of Art in Evanston, Hamdia Traoré’s exhibit “Des Marabouts de Djenné” and Muslim Portraiture in Africa marks the Malian artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States.
And in downtown, the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago is presenting “MoCP at Fifty: Collecting Through the Decades.” The show revisits the museum’s history and its evolving approach to photography as part of its 50th anniversary celebration.
The Block Museum exhibit features 30 portraits of marabouts, revered Islamic scholars and teachers, from the town of Djenné in Mali. Traoré photographed the religious leaders between 2017 and 2020 in mosques, Quranic schools and their homes. The works were acquired by the museum in 2023.
“As a photographer born in Djenné, this city has influenced me on many levels (historical, Islamic, touristic, architectural, cultural, etc.),” Traoré said in an email translated from French.
He was raised Muslim and attended a Quranic school, where he was introduced to marabouts as a child. Traoré chose marabouts from his hometown as the main subjects not only to document their expertise but also to highlight their individual qualities.
Kathleen Bickford Berzock, associate director of curatorial affairs at the Block Museum and co-curator of the exhibition, met Traoré in 2015 while visiting Mali’s capital, Bamako, where the artist is based.
“He’s found a way to connect us through these portraits to people that live lives in a completely different corner of the world,” Berzock said. “Through the photographs, we get a sense of the shared humanity that we have across place.”
The exhibition’s cover image, a portrait of Yelpha Djïeté, imam of the Great Mosque of Djenné, holds special significance for the artist. Djïeté sits on a lush prayer rug while wearing a white boubou, a traditional robe with golden embroidery, and holding a staff. His seating position forms a triangle, which Berzock said symbolizes grandeur and status.
“As soon as you see this portrait, with his boubou and the background, you think of northern Mali,” Traoré said. “These two historic and tourist cities (Timbuktu or Djenné) have a unique identity and are very well known worldwide.”
Each portrait follows a consistent structure. The marabouts are seated low to the ground, facing the camera, surrounded by books, prayer beads and other objects associated with Islamic teachings.
“The repetitiveness of the photographs becomes this really powerful statement about the scale and the scope of this type of learning and leadership within the community,” Berzock said. “At the same time, they’re incredibly intimate (photographs). As a viewer, you’re looking right into the eyes of these men.”
The Block Museum is also hosting “Teresa Montoya’s Tó Łitso (Yellow Water): Ten Years after the Gold King Mine Spill,” a photography exhibition that examines a 2015 toxic waste spill in Colorado and its impact on the Navajo Nation and other Indigenous communities in the Southwest. Both exhibits will run until June 14.
“MoCP at Fifty”
While the Block Museum’s exhibitions look outward, the Museum of Contemporary Photography’s anniversary show looks inward.
Founded in 1976 as a gallery affiliated with Columbia College Chicago, the photography museum began formally collecting in 1979 as a teaching resource. Over five decades, the collection has grown to include more than 18,000 pieces by over 2,000 artists.
“MoCP at Fifty: Collecting Through the Decades,” running through May 16, displays selections from the museum’s vast archive throughout five galleries. Organized in reverse chronological order, it begins with recent acquisitions between 2016 and 2025, and moves backward in time.
“We wanted to celebrate the collection and show how collections form,” said MoCP Executive Director Natasha Egan, who has worked at the institution for 30 years. “They’re about what’s happening in the world, but they’re also about who the curators are and what they’re focused on at the time.”
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The exhibition presents each of the decades as both artistic and institutional records. Before the 2000s, acquisitions focused on American documentary and street photography produced after 1959. These early collections reflected a mid-20th century lens and showed the influence of figures such as Robert Frank.
Among the works on view is the museum’s first acquired photograph, cataloged in 1979 as object No. 1. The 1973 black-and-white image, by an artist named Larry Williams, depicts a man being punched in the nose. Little is known about the photographer.
“It’s such a strange picture,” Egan said. “We wish someone would call and say, ‘I’m Larry Williams.’ But forever it will be our first photograph.”
Egan aimed to feature recognizable photographs, such as Dorothea Lange’s prints and Carrie Mae Weems’ Kitchen Table Series, alongside pieces that have never been displayed publicly.
Wall texts address demographic gaps in earlier acquisitions, noting limited representation of women and artists of color. In more recent years, the museum has adjusted its priorities, and committed to directing 30% of its annual acquisition budget toward Native American artists.
“We’re proud of the work we’ve done, but we’re also ready to admit our failures,” Egan said.
Kim Potowski, a photographer and linguistics professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, visited during the show’s opening reception.
“This place is important,” Potowski said. “All cultural institutions are products of their time. I like how they’ve made an effort to be honest about that and show how they’re moving toward more socially just representation.”
Alongside traditional photos, experimental and process-based works spanning analog and digital technologies are on display. This includes a camera sculpture by Daniel Arsham and a large-scale camera obscura image of downtown Chicago by Vera Lutter.
Lysander Soto, a filmmaker and cinematographer, returned to the museum after graduating from Columbia College Chicago in 2023.
“It’s cool that they’re giving the public a chance to see this,” Soto said.
He also appreciated the timing of the exhibit, given the growing trend of artificial intelligence-generated art.
“It’s great to look back at this historical collection and be like, ‘Wow, this is art that is made by humans,’” Soto said. “This is art that connects to everybody.”
“Des Marabouts de Djenné” runs through June 14 at Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston, blockmuseum.northwestern.edu; “MoCP at Fifty” runs through May 16 Museum of Contemporary Photography, 600 S. Michigan Ave.; mocp.org