In 2027, The Block will present Pasados Presentes: Cultural Memory in the Americas, an original, bilingual exhibition that places colonial paintings from the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation’s Art of the Spanish Americas collection in dialogue with contemporary sculpture, textiles, photography, painting, and mixed-media installations by artists from across the Americas and the Philippines.

Together, these works reveal how artists have used and adapted materials and artistic forms to transmit cultural memory, reinterpret inherited histories, and shape understandings of identity and place. By approaching materials and media as inseparable from a work's meaning, Pasados Presentes asks how art participates in shaping the history of the Americas and whose stories are preserved, obscured, or reimagined within those narratives.

Pasados Presentes: Cultural Memory in the Americas is curated by Jesús Escobar, Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor in the Humanities, and Kyle Stephan, Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University. Lead support for the exhibition is provided by the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation. Additional generous support is provided by the Illinois Arts Council and The Alumnae of Northwestern University.