Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates has developed an expanded practice that includes space development, object making, performance and critical engagement with many publics. Founder of the non-profit Rebuild Foundation, Gates is currently a Professor in the Department of Visual Art and Director of Arts and Public Life at the University of Chicago.
Website: http://theastergates.com/home.html
Recent winner of Artes Mundi 6, Gates has also received awards and grants from Creative Time, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, United States Artists, Creative Capital, the Joyce Foundation, Graham Foundation, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and Artadia.
His Vision
Seventeen other people have tried and failed to redevelop the bank, built in 1923, before Gates came along with an entirely different approach. Money was never the goal for Gates, who in 2010 founded the redevelopment non-profit Rebuild Foundation for the purpose of rebuilding cultural institutions in neighborhoods that have been underfunded.
Gates wanted to transform the Stony Island Arts Bank into a place that would give everyone, no matter their income level, free access to culture and art.
Gates was able to fund the remodel by taking marble recovered from the building and engraving it to resemble bank bonds, which he then sold to art collectors at the annual Art Basel show.
With the money he was able to turn the bank into an art gallery, music venue, community center, archive, bar and library, making it into a place that held people's 'most precious things.
Part of that, was filling Stony Island Arts Bank with the kinds of materials that would both inspire and educate visitor's.
The entire Johnson Publishing Company archive, which includes the magazines Jet, Ebony and Negro Digest, can be found in the library, as well as the Edward J Williams 'negrobilia' collection of racist objects that were purchased to remove them from the market.
And the entire vinyl collection of DJ Frankie Knuckles', known as the godfather of house music, is also available, as is glass lantern slides from the University of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
But Gates also wanted to maintain the bank's history, preserving the rusted vault, cracked plaster moldings and some of the paint that had blistered on the walls.
The building opened earlier this month as part of the three-month-long Chicago Architecture Biennial festival, and Gates hopes it will show people the possibilities of cultural redevelopment.
