Established in 1980, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art is designed to serve Northwestern University's educational goals and to make its scholarly exhibitions and interpretive programs accessible to both students and the public. Founder Leigh Block, trustee and president of the Art Institute of Chicago as well as a trustee of Northwestern University, joined with his wife Mary Block to assemble one of the finest personal art collections in the United States. Elements of this collection form the basis for the permanent collection of the Block Museum, which includes over seven thousand works of art on paper, as well as monumental sculptures installed in a landscape garden environment.

The Block Museum sculpture garden, opened on June 3, 1989, was designed by Chicago architect John Vinci, whose other work includes restoration of the Stock Exchange Trading Room at the Art Institute and of the Frank Lloyd Wright studio in Oak Park. The sculpture garden constitutes one of the Midwest's most significant groupings of modern sculpture, including such major artists as Jean Arp, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Jacques Lipchitz, and Joan Miro.

The collection of works on paper includes drawings, prints, and photographs dating from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. Especially notable is a large selection of contemporary prints and architectural drawings. Major Chicago-focused exhibitions have included Second-Sight: Printmaking in Chicago, 1935–1995 (1996).

Ronne Hartfield