Each year, Northwestern undergraduates help shape The Block Museum of Art’s collection through a student-led acquisition process. The Block Collects 2026 presents the work selected by the 2025–26 Block Museum Student Associates: and you, all future tense, leak through (2023), a mixed-media work on hand-cut paper by Antonius-Tín Bui.

Bui’s wide-ranging practice spans hand-cut paper, community engagement, performance, and soft sculpture, often engaging with hybrid identities and complex relationships with the past. As a Vietnamese American, queer, and genderfluid artist, Bui offers beauty as a place of refuge for others from marginalized communities.

The exhibition places Bui’s work in conversation with other works from The Block’s collection. These pairings draw out strands that run through Bui’s practice, including cutting, weaving, and movement, while opening broader questions about how histories of place and material belonging change over time.

The Block’s annual acquisition is undertaken by the Block Museum Student Associates, an interdisciplinary cohort of Northwestern undergraduates who study artists, discuss the priorities of a teaching collection, and collectively recommend a work for purchase. The Block Collects 2026 makes that process visible, showing how students contribute directly to the museum and help build a collection that will support future teaching, research, and public engagement.