A Close Look: Water Security & Flint Is Family

Explore selections from artist LaToya Ruby Frazier’s Flint is Family series from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Essi Rönkkö, The Block’s Associate Curator of Collections and Academic Programming, will lead a discussion of Frazier’s photographs, on view in the Living Room from March 11-April 5, which address the Flint, Michigan water crisis and lead contamination from water service lines. Following Essi’s introduction to the series, professors Sera Young (Anthropology), Julius Lucks (Chemical and Biological Engineering), and members of their research groups will share how water safety and lead contamination also affects Chicagoland and the rapid, at-home tests they’ve developed to detect lead contamination in drinking water.

The Living Room is a drop-in space at The Block Museum that invites students and other visitors to gather, reflect, and connect with one artwork in the museum’s collection, rotating each month. Stop by for a warm drink and a conversation — every Wednesday from 3–5 PM, the coffee and tea is on us.

Participation level – light, participants may choose to share thoughts and questions during the gallery talk.

Programs are open to all, on a first-come first-served basis. RSVPs are not required, but are appreciated.

About the Speakers

Essi Rönkkö is the Associate Curator of Collections and Academic Programming at The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University. Her work focuses on collection research and curricular programming. Since coming to The Block in 2016, Rönkkö has co-curated several exhibitions including Paint the Eyes Softer: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt (2018) and Who Says, Who Shows, What Counts: Thinking about History with The Block’s Collection (2021) as well as annual collection-based installations Looking 101 and The Block Collects. Prior to her appointment at The Block, she worked at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College and Sara Hildén Art Museum in Tampere, Finland. Rönkkö has an MA in History from the University of Tampere.

Sera L. Young is a Professor of Anthropology and the Morton O. Schapiro Faculty Fellow at Northwestern University. She is also co-Director of NU's Center for Water, co-Editor-in-Chief of PLOS Water, and Lead for Water, Nutrition, and Health Equity at the United Nations University. As an applied anthropologist, she has dedicated her career to understanding how women, especially in low-resource settings, cope to preserve their health and that of their families. After her BA in Cultural Anthropology (U of Michigan), she pursued an MA in Medical Anthropology (U of Amsterdam), where she studied maternal anemia in Zanzibar, Tanzania. For her PhD in International Nutrition (Cornell) she returned to observations about anemia in Zanzibar: that anemic women craved earth, raw starch and other non-food substances (pica). She has co-authored more than 170 peer-reviewed publications and been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, USAID, and FCDO/BMGF; awards include the Margaret Mead Award for her book Craving Earth, the Nevin Scrimshaw Prize, an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, and a Leverhulme Visiting Professorship at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Julius Lucks is the Margery Claire Carlson Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the co-director of the Center for Synthetic Biology at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering. He leads The Lucks Laboratory, which uncovers the principles of molecular design for biology, medicine, and biotechnology, focusing on 4 main research areas: high-throughput RNA structural biology; understanding RNA folding and function; RNA design and engineering; and synthetic biology diagnostics. He earned his B.S. in Chemistry at UNC Chapel Hill, his M.Phil. in Theoretical Chemistry at Cambridge University, and his PhD in Chemical Physics at Harvard University. In 2025 he was appointed a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Image credit: LaToya Ruby Frazier (American, born 1982), Shea Cobb, Amber Hasan, and Her Children, Nieces, and Nephews (Zari, DJ, Jayda, Justin, Justace, Jaylen) and Their Friends Playing in the Water Moses West Is Spraying from His Atmospheric Water Generator on North Saginaw Street Between East Marengo Avenue and East Pulaski Avenue, Flint, Michigan, from the series Flint Is Family, 2019 printed 2023, Inkjet print, pigment-based. Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Block Collection Council Fund purchase. 2023.12.2.

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