Northwestern celebrates 22 years as a top Fulbright producer
February 4, 2026
This winter, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University will present two exhibitions drawn from recent museum acquisitions of photographic portfolios. Both exhibitions, “Hamdia Traoré’s Des marabouts de Djenné and Muslim Portraiture in Mali,” and “Teresa Montoya: Tó Łitso (Yellow Water): Ten Years After the Gold King Mine Spill,” will be on view from Feb. 4 to July 14.
Each exhibition explores how contemporary artists use the medium of the extended photographic portfolio to tell a comprehensive story. The exhibitions also focus on artists documenting and interpreting the presentation of their own communities — Traoré focuses on Djenné, the historic center of Islamic learning in Mali, and Montoya on the riverways of the Animus and San Juan in the Southwest.
“These portfolios by Traoré and Montoya both demonstrate an intimacy that comes from proximity to the people and the stories they represent,” said Kathleen Bickford Berzock, associate director of curatorial affairs. “The visually stunning photographs draw us in. As viewers, we are invited through them into places and moments that most of us otherwise would not know. These two impactful portfolios speak to how our collection is expanding to represent global voices and artistic practices that resonate deeply with conversations across Northwestern.”
Traoré’s “Des marabouts de Djenné” extends the museum’s alignment with topics taught within the Programs of African Studies (PAS), Middle East and North African Studies (MENA) and the Herskovits Library of African Studies, among others. The series presents portraits of Muslim scholars and teachers, known as marabouts, from Traoré’s hometown of Djenné, a historic center of Islamic learning in Mali. The work also resonates with themes explored in The Block’s 2019 traveling exhibition “Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa.”
Montoya’s “Tó Łitso (Yellow Water)” contributes to University-wide dialogues around Indigenous studies and environmentalism, including ongoing Block partnerships with the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR) and the Climate Crisis + Media Arts working group. Her portfolio traces the path of contamination following the 2015 Gold King Mine spill, reflecting on its cultural and ecological aftermath for Diné and other Indigenous communities in the American Southwest. The exhibition also continues conversations that were part of The Block’s 2025 exhibition “Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak/Chicagoland.”
“The Block is honored to be the home for these important portfolios, and we look forward to rich discussion of the artists’ work across Northwestern,” said Lisa Corrin, the Ellen Philips Katz Executive Director of The Block Museum of Art.
“It was important for us to present these portfolio series in their entirety, in close collaboration with the artists themselves. A complete photographic portfolio offers a fuller picture of an artist’s subject and practice. Presenting the works in sequence invites viewers to follow the artist’s thinking across time and place. These photographic series will become lasting resources for students, offering opportunities to study how artists can construct meaning through sustained engagement with their subjects,” Corrin said.
Traoré’s “Des marabouts de Djenné” and Muslim portraiture in Mali
The storied city of Djenné, a center of Islamic learning and scholarship since the 12th century, is the hometown of Bamako-based photographer Hamdia Traoré (b.1992, Mali). His series “Des marabouts de Djenné (Marabouts of Djenne)” comprises 30 portraits of “marabouts,” whose work sustains the city’s intellectual and spiritual traditions.
Made between 2018 and 2023, Traoré’s portraits capture his subjects onsite within the spaces of their work, seated with the tools of their practice — Qur’ans, writing boards, amulets and prayer beads. Created amid a period of political and social upheaval in Mali, these images reflect endurance, devotion and continuity.
“I want viewers to know who these marabouts are — teachers with schools, men of learning and care,” Traoré said. “By photographing them where they work and teach, I am preserving their presence for today and for the future.”
“Des marabouts de Djenné” marks Traoré’s first solo exhibition in the U.S. His work will be shown alongside mid-20th-century, black-and-white portraits of marabouts by Mamadou Cissé, Abdourahmane Sakaly, Tijani Sitou and Félix Diallo drawn from the Archive of Malian Photography in collaboration with the artists’ studios. Seen together, these historical and contemporary images evoke representations of faith, identity and authority in Malian visual culture over time.
Hamdia Traoré is a documentary photographer based in Bamako, Mali. His photographs have been exhibited both in Mali and abroad. He has worked as a photographer and videographer for the United States and British embassies in Mali and the Consulate of Monaco in Mali, as well as for international NGOs, including SPANA, Tree Aid, Sightsavers, DevWorks, Vétérinaire Sans Frontières Belgium and the Organization for the Prevention of Blindness. He is also affiliated with the photo agency Andolu Images. In 2015, he received the Documentary Award in the architecture category from the Humanity Photo Awards of the China Folklore Photographic Association.
The exhibition of Hamdia Traoré’s portfolio was developed in collaboration with the artist and Candace M. Keller, associate professor, art history and visual culture, Michigan State University and co-founder of the Archive of Malian Photography. At The Block, the exhibition is supported by the Kadin/Spiegel Family Endowed Fund and a grant from the Illinois Arts Council.
