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Theaster Gates, Temple Exercises, 2009 © Theaster Gates. Photo: Sara Pooley, courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Installation

Theaster Gates
Min | Mon

Open from July 2, 2023
Luma Arles, France
www.luma.org

Min | Mon by Theaster Gates highlights the ritual, conviviality, and cultural hybridity often at the heart of his projects. Temple, a central structure using materials from Gates’s earliest exhibitions, deepens his exploration of “Afro-Mingei”—an inquiry into the intersection of Black cultural aesthetics and mingei, a Japanese movement honoring the handmade craftsmanship of ordinary utilitarian objects. Uniting key strands of his work, Gates has developed a participatory installation with a DJ booth featuring the artist’s own collection of vinyl records and a bar offering a new sake produced by Gates with the Hakurou brand in Tokoname, Japan. Min | Mon exemplifies Gates’s engagement with ceremony in Eastern culture while giving form to complex truths about craft, labor, value, and origin.

Theaster Gates, Temple Exercises, 2009 © Theaster Gates. Photo: Sara Pooley, courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Theaster Gates, Black Artist Retreat: Reflections on 10 years of Convening, 2023 (still) © Theaster Gates

Exhibition

Theaster Gates in
Biennale Architettura 2023: The Laboratory of the Future

May 20–November 26, 2023
Giardini and Arsenale, Venice
www.labiennale.org

The Laboratory of the Future is an exhibition in six parts and includes eighty-nine participants, over half of whom are from Africa or the African diaspora. Threaded through both venues are works by young practitioners who engage directly with the twin themes of this exhibition—decolonization and decarbonization—providing a glimpse of future practices and ways of seeing and being in the world. The documentary film Black Artist Retreat: Reflections on 10 years of Convening (2023) by Theaster Gates is included.

Theaster Gates, Black Artist Retreat: Reflections on 10 years of Convening, 2023 (still) © Theaster Gates

Still from Andrei Rublev (1966), directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

Screening and Talk

Theaster Gates
Christina Kiaer

Wednesday, November 16, 2022, 7pm
Metrograph, New York
metrograph.com

Join Theaster Gates as he introduces The Trace, a film program he curated as part of a series copresented by Gagosian and Metrograph. Gates’s program explores filmic relationships across genres and decades that begin to lay out the origins of Russian engagement with Black American labor movements and analogous cinematic projects. Foregrounding the artist’s interest in propaganda and nation building, Gates and Christina Kiaer, Arthur Andersen Teaching and Research Professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, will discuss the political voicing and aesthetic and technical devices that appear in films about the Soviet project and the Black Power movement, anchoring their dialogue on Andrei Tarkovsky’s revered film Andrei Rublev, while reflecting on the sacred, the radicalized, and the culturally specific. Clips from Andrei Rublev, Soviet newsreels, and Zora Neale Hurston’s anthropological fieldwork in the rural South will be screened before the talk.

Purchase Tickets

Still from Andrei Rublev (1966), directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

Still from Daughters of the Dust (1991), directed by Julie Dash

Screening

Theaster Gates Selects

November 16–27, 2022
Metrograph, New York
metrograph.com

Theaster Gates has curated a selection of films under the title The Trace, as part of a series copresented by Gagosian and Metrograph, in the theater and online. The program, organized in conjunction with the exhibition Theaster Gates: Young Lords and Their Traces at the New Museum, New York, will explore filmic relationships across different genres and decades that begin to lay out the origins of Russian engagement with Black American labor movements and analogous cinematic projects.

Still from Daughters of the Dust (1991), directed by Julie Dash

Theaster Gates takeover at the Gagosian Shop, London, 2022. Artwork © Theaster Gates. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Shop Takeover

Theaster Gates

June 10–July 2, 2022
Gagosian Shop, London

Theaster Gates is taking over the Gagosian Shop in London’s historic Burlington Arcade on the occasion of his 2022 Serpentine Pavilion, Black Chapel, and his exhibition at Gagosian, Basel, titled ASHEN. For the takeover, Gates created an immersive environment in which visitors may explore his wide-ranging practice.

The display includes wall and floor sculptures featuring a range of clay vessels—tea bowls, water jars, sake cups—forms that are foundational to Gates’s art making. Downstairs, the basement floor of the Shop has been transformed into a reading room where visitors can browse a curated selection of books that have influenced the artist, with subjects ranging from urban planning and pottery to the Russian avant-garde. Two limited-edition vinyl records produced by Gates and his musical ensemble the Black Monks are also available.

Theaster Gates takeover at the Gagosian Shop, London, 2022. Artwork © Theaster Gates. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Serpentine Pavilion 2022: Black Chapel by Theaster Gates, London, 2022. Artwork © Theaster Gates. Photo: Iwan Baan, courtesy Serpentine

Commission

Theaster Gates
Serpentine Pavilion 2022

June 10–October 16, 2022
Serpentine Pavilion, London
www.serpentinegalleries.org

Theaster Gates has been commissioned to design the 2022 Serpentine Pavilion in London. Realized with the architectural support of Adjaye Associates and set within Serpentine’s grounds in Kensington Gardens, Black Chapel draws inspiration from the architectural typologies of both chapels and the kilns of Stoke-on-Trent, England, paying homage to British craft and manufacturing traditions. Continuing Gates’s ongoing experimentation with clay objects in his studio practice, the design also reflects the artist’s interest in space making through various urban revitalization projects. Open annually from June to October, the Serpentine Pavilion has become an international site for architectural experimentation.

To mark the opening of the Pavilion, Gates and Sir David Adjaye will be in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist on June 8 at 2pm. The wide-ranging discussion will encompass their respective work in art, architecture, urbanism, and space making. To attend the event, purchase tickets at ticketing.serpentingegalleries.org.

Serpentine Pavilion 2022: Black Chapel by Theaster Gates, London, 2022. Artwork © Theaster Gates. Photo: Iwan Baan, courtesy Serpentine

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Announcements

Theaster Gates at his studio in Chicago, 2020. Photo: Lyndon French

Award

Theaster Gates
Vincent Scully Prize 2023

Theaster Gates has been named the 2023 winner of the National Building Museum’s Vincent Scully Prize. Established in 1999, the award recognizes excellence in practice, scholarship, or criticism in architecture, historic preservation, and urban design. The jury was impressed by Gates’s collecting practice, which in addition to the constellation of Black spaces on Chicago’s South Side that he is actively creating, includes a number of historic record collections, such as those of the godfather of house music, Frankie Knuckles, and the Olympic runner Jesse Owens; over fifteen thousand objects from the legendary Johnson Publishing Company offices; Edward J. Williams and Ana Williams’s collection of approximately four thousand objects of “negrobilia” that make use of stereotypical images of Black people; over sixty thousand glass lantern slides from the University of Chicago; and the fourteen-thousand-volume Prairie Avenue Bookshop Archive.

Theaster Gates at his studio in Chicago, 2020. Photo: Lyndon French

Theaster Gates, Altar for the Unbanned, 2023, installation view, Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago Public Library © Theaster Gates

Permanent Installation

Theaster Gates
Altar for the Unbanned

Theaster Gates’s Altar for the Unbanned has been permanently installed at the Harold Washington Library Center branch of the Chicago Public Library (CPL). It features spiral shelves of books that have been banned at different points in American history topped by a rotating neon sign of the word “unbanned.” Actively responding to rising demands for censorship through public organizing, CPL partnered with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events to commission Gates’s installation. Library officials hope this public artwork will expose citizens to banned titles and encourage them to engage with these books.

Theaster Gates, Altar for the Unbanned, 2023, installation view, Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago Public Library © Theaster Gates

Photo: Rankin

Honor

Theaster Gates
Isamu Noguchi Award 2023

Theaster Gates has been selected to receive the Isamu Noguchi Award for his contribution as an artist. Established in 2014 and presented annually, the award perpetuates Noguchi’s legacy by acknowledging highly accomplished individuals who share his spirit of innovation, unbounded imagination, and uncompromising commitment to creativity. Honoring those whose work exhibits qualities of artistic excellence, the award also recognizes work that carries significant social consciousness and function. Gates will receive the award during the annual benefit gala at the Noguchi Museum, New York, in September 2023.

Photo: Rankin

Theaster Gates’s Dorchester Projects (2006–), Chicago. Artwork © Theaster Gates. Photo: Sara Pooley

Award

Theaster Gates
Kiesler Prize 2021

Theaster Gates has been awarded the twelfth Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts by a jury of his peers. The prize is awarded and endowed alternately every two years by the Republic of Austria and the City of Vienna and organized by the Vienna-based Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation. Gates was recognized for his extraordinary achievements in effecting social change, spatial transformation, and empowerment through his creative practice, which spans a range of artistic genres connected with a social agenda and can be easily linked to the late artist/architect Frederick Kiesler’s belief in the unification of the arts with the built environment and the social notion of space. The ceremony took place in Vienna on June 15, 2022.

Theaster Gates’s Dorchester Projects (2006–), Chicago. Artwork © Theaster Gates. Photo: Sara Pooley

Theaster Gates, White Line Drawing, 2020 © Theaster Gates

Honor

Theaster Gates
American Academy of Arts and Letters

Theaster Gates will be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters during a virtual award ceremony on May 19, 2021. Founded in 1898, the organization honors the country’s leading visual artists, architects, composers, and writers, and seeks to foster interest in literature, music, and art by administering awards, exhibiting work, funding performances, and purchasing artwork for donation to museums. Election into the American Academy of Arts and Letters is considered the highest form of recognition of artistic merit in the United States, and its 300 members are elected for life.

Theaster Gates, White Line Drawing, 2020 © Theaster Gates

Theaster Gates, Black Vessel for a Saint, 2017 © Theaster Gates. Photo: Gene Pittman

Permanent Installation

Theaster Gates
Black Vessel for a Saint

The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis has permanently installed Theaster Gates’s Black Vessel for a Saint (2017) in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. In 2014, St. Laurence Church, located just a few blocks from Theaster Gates’s Chicago studio and considered an architectural beacon in the neighborhood for more than a century, was demolished. Among the objects and materials that Gates collected from the building was a life-size stone statue of St. Laurence, a venerated Roman martyr and the patron saint of librarians and archivists. Gates included the statue in several exhibitions in Europe, revealing new meanings in each location, before placing it in its permanent home in the Sculpture Garden in 2017, within a shrine built from custom-made black bricks.

Theaster Gates, Black Vessel for a Saint, 2017 © Theaster Gates. Photo: Gene Pittman

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Museum Exhibitions

Theaster Gates, The Flood, 2023, installation view, Fondazione Prada, Venice © Theaster Gates. Photo: Marco Cappelletti

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Theaster Gates in
Everybody Talks about the Weather

May 20–November 26, 2023
Fondazione Prada, Venice
www.fondazioneprada.org

Everybody Talks about the Weather is a research exhibition exploring the semantics of “weather” in visual art, taking atmospheric conditions as its point of departure in order to highlight the urgency of climate change. More than fifty works by contemporary artists, and a complementary selection of historical artworks, trace the various ways in which climate and weather have shaped our histories, and how we have dealt with our exposure to meteorological events. Work by Theaster Gates is included.

Theaster Gates, The Flood, 2023, installation view, Fondazione Prada, Venice © Theaster Gates. Photo: Marco Cappelletti

Installation view, Icônes, Punta della Dogana, Venice, April 2–November 26, 2023. Artwork, left and right: © Rudolf Stingel, center: © Danh Vo. Photo: Marco Cappelletti, courtesy Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection

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Icônes

April 2–November 26, 2023
Punta della Dogana, Venice
www.pinaultcollection.com

Icônes includes painting, video, sound, installation, and performance from the Pinault Collection. The icons of the title suggest a transcendent reality—the power to render material the invisible, create emotion or a sense of aesthetic and spiritual bedazzlement. This exhibition considers both the fragility and the power of images as icons and the multiple meanings they carry. Work by Theaster Gates, Donald Judd, and Rudolf Stingel is included.

Installation view, Icônes, Punta della Dogana, Venice, April 2–November 26, 2023. Artwork, left and right: © Rudolf Stingel, center: © Danh Vo. Photo: Marco Cappelletti, courtesy Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection

Sally Mann, Candy Cigarette, 1989 © Sally Mann 

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No Place Like Home

January 31–April 28, 2023
Schingoethe Center, Aurora University, Illinois
aurora.edu

No Place Like Home features artworks by more than thirty artists who address the concept of home from multiple perspectives. The exhibition features photography, sculpture, video, paintings, textiles, and printmaking and explores the many facets of home as a place of joy and sorrow, rest and labor, refuge and danger. Work by Theaster Gates and Sally Mann is included.

Sally Mann, Candy Cigarette, 1989 © Sally Mann 

Tatiana Trouvé, Untitled, 2019, from the series Les dessouvenus, 2013– © Tatiana Trouvé. Photo: Florian Kleinefenn

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Traces

July 30, 2022–April 23, 2023
Portland Art Museum, Oregon
portlandartmuseum.org

Traces presents poetic reflections on memory in contemporary art and features recent acquisitions alongside works borrowed from private collections. The exhibition showcases seven international artists who evocatively capture the traces of events, people, or places as remembrances of real experiences or projections of imagined ones. Work by Theaster Gates and Tatiana Trouvé is included.

Tatiana Trouvé, Untitled, 2019, from the series Les dessouvenus, 2013– © Tatiana Trouvé. Photo: Florian Kleinefenn

Installation view, Theaster Gates: Young Lords and Their Traces, New Museum, New York, November 11, 2022–February 5, 2023. Artwork © Theaster Gates. Photo: Dario Lasagni, courtesy New Museum, New York

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Theaster Gates
Young Lords and Their Traces

November 10, 2022–February 5, 2023
New Museum, New York
www.newmuseum.org

Theaster Gates: Young Lords and Their Traces presents a selection of the artist’s paintings, sculptures, videos, performances, and archival collections that together memorialize both heroic figures and more humble, everyday icons. Gates’s elevation of these quieter sources of knowledge, and his assertion that collecting is a form of devotion and remembrance, has made his work reverberate on both local and international levels. In this exhibition the Chicago-based artist honors the radical thinkers who have shaped his practice and his world.

Installation view, Theaster Gates: Young Lords and Their Traces, New Museum, New York, November 11, 2022–February 5, 2023. Artwork © Theaster Gates. Photo: Dario Lasagni, courtesy New Museum, New York

Theaster Gates, The Double Wide, 2022, installation view, Baltimore Museum of Art © Theaster Gates. Photo: Mitro Hood

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Theaster Gates in
A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration

October 30, 2022–January 29, 2023
Baltimore Museum of Art
artbma.org

A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration explores the profound impact of the Great Migration on the social and cultural life of the United States from historical and personal perspectives. The Great Migration (1915–70) saw more than six million Black Americans leave the South for cities across the country. The exhibition features newly commissioned works in a variety of media by twelve Black artists who explore themes of perseverance, self-determination, and self-reliance in their practices. Informed by research, explorations, and conversations, they examine the impacts this historical phenomenon continues to have today. This exhibition has traveled from the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson. Work by Theaster Gates is included.

Theaster Gates, The Double Wide, 2022, installation view, Baltimore Museum of Art © Theaster Gates. Photo: Mitro Hood

Sally Mann, The Bath, 1989 © Sally Mann

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Monochrome Multitudes

September 22, 2022–January 8, 2023
Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago
smartmuseum.uchicago.edu

Revisiting classic modernist ideas about flatness, idealized form, and colors, this exhibition opens up the seemingly reductive format of the monochrome to reveal its global resonance and creative possibilities while working toward a more expansive narrative of twentieth and twenty-first century art. Work by Alexander Calder, Walter De Maria, Helen Frankenthaler, Theaster Gates, Frank Gehry, Sally Mann, and Richard Serra is included.

Sally Mann, The Bath, 1989 © Sally Mann

Theaster Gates, The Double Wide, 2022, installation view, Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson © Theaster Gates. Photo: Mitro Hood, courtesy Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, and Baltimore Museum of Art

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Theaster Gates in
A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration

April 9–September 11, 2022
Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson
www.msmuseumart.org

A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration explores the profound impact of the Great Migration on the social and cultural life of the United States from historical and personal perspectives. The Great Migration (1915–70) saw more than six million Black Americans leave the South for cities across the country. The exhibition features newly commissioned works in a variety of media by twelve Black artists who explore themes of perseverance, self-determination, and self-reliance in their practices. Informed by research, explorations, and conversations, they examine the impacts this historical phenomenon continues to have today. Work by Theaster Gates is included.

Theaster Gates, The Double Wide, 2022, installation view, Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson © Theaster Gates. Photo: Mitro Hood, courtesy Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, and Baltimore Museum of Art

Theaster Gates, Long Run, Left with Guide Line, 2018 © Theaster Gates. Photo: Evan Bedford

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Theaster Gates in
Working Thought

March 5–June 26, 2022
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
cmoa.org

Working Thought examines the role that art can play in considering and questioning the myriad ways in which economic inequality and labor have shaped American life in the past and present. Featuring work by thirty-five contemporary artists working across mediums and generations, the exhibition presents new commissions and loans alongside works from the Carnegie Museum of Art’s collection, positioning its holdings in a new light and within the context of Pittsburgh’s history as a center of industry. Work by Theaster Gates is included.

Theaster Gates, Long Run, Left with Guide Line, 2018 © Theaster Gates. Photo: Evan Bedford

Theaster Gates, A Clay Sermon, 2021 (still) © Theaster Gates

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Theaster Gates in
Hawai‘i Triennial 2022: Pacific Century–E Ho‘omau No Moananuiākea

February 18–May 8, 2022
Various locations around Oahu, Hawaii
hawaiicontemporary.org

Hawai‘i Triennial 2022 is framed around interweaving themes of history, place, and identity within the context of Hawaiʻi’s unique location at the confluence of the Asia Pacific region and Oceania. Installed across seven of Oahu’s major cultural institutions, the triennial features the work of more than sixty artists from Hawaii and beyond. The event is organized by Hawai‘i Contemporary, a Honolulu-based nonprofit organization. Work by Theaster Gates is included.

Theaster Gates, A Clay Sermon, 2021 (still) © Theaster Gates

Theaster Gates, Vessel #24, 2020, installation view, Benaki Museum of Greek Culture, Athens © Theaster Gates

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Theaster Gates
Vessels

February 4–April 30, 2022
Benaki Museum of Greek Culture, Athens
www.benaki.org

Vessels features a group of seven large-scale ceramic works by Theaster Gates in which the artist synthesizes ancient traditions and modern aesthetics, drawing elective affinities between Eastern, Western, and African techne. Gates’s consideration of the clay vessel as a universal object of ritual significance, which testifies to the primordial relationship between humankind and clay, is given full expression in the Benaki Museum galleries by virtue of comparison with ancient pottery from across the Eastern Mediterranean zone.

Theaster Gates, Vessel #24, 2020, installation view, Benaki Museum of Greek Culture, Athens © Theaster Gates

Installation view, Theaster Gates: A Clay Sermon, Whitechapel Gallery, London, September 29, 2021–January 9, 2022. Artwork © Theaster Gates. Photo: Theo Christelis

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Theaster Gates
A Clay Sermon

September 29, 2021–January 9, 2022
Whitechapel Gallery, London
www.whitechapelgallery.org

Surveying two decades of work by Theaster Gates, from his early hand-thrown pots to his large-scale Afro-Mingei sculptures, A Clay Sermon investigates the material and spiritual legacies of clay. Exploring craft, labor, performance, and racial identity, as well as clay’s role in ceremony, ritual, colonialism, and global trade, Gates has made a selection of historical ceramics from private and public collections to exhibit alongside his own work. The exhibition includes a new film by Gates, which takes the form of a sermon on clay, and his most recent body of work: large stoneware vessels installed on plinths of hand-milled wood and stone.

Installation view, Theaster Gates: A Clay Sermon, Whitechapel Gallery, London, September 29, 2021–January 9, 2022. Artwork © Theaster Gates. Photo: Theo Christelis

See all Museum Exhibitions for Theaster Gates