Expansive Theaster Gates Exhibition To Open This May In Chicago At Stony Island Arts Bank

Rebuild Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to artistic innovation and creative practice rooted in Chicago's South Side, will present this spring an exhibition of work by artist Theaster Gates, featuring a suite of new works and showcasing for the first time in totality in the U.S. his “Facsimile Cabinet of Women's Origin Stories,” an ambitious archival installation comprising over 3,000 framed images of women from the Johnson Publishing Company photographic archive.

Founded in Chicago in 1942, the Johnson Publishing Company chronicled the lives of Black Americans for over seven decades through the magazines Ebony and Jet. Temporarily transforming the Stony Island Arts Bank — an historic site reinvigorated by Gates as a community hub for the arts — the exhibition will showcase newly restored objects, vibrant office furniture, and works of art owned by John H. Johnson, in addition to Gates' work. Theaster Gates: When Clouds Roll Away: Reflection and Restoration from the Johnson Archive will be on view from May 23, 2024, through August 31, 2024.

“Facsimile Cabinet of Women Origin Stories” is an immersive and participatory photographic installation, first presented at the Kunstmuseum Basel, in Basel, Switzerland (2018) as part of Gates' exhibition Black Madonna and at subsequent exhibitions at Fondazione Prada, Gropius Bau, Spelman College, and Colby College. Through the process of putting on conservator's gloves and handling the framed photographs that are stored in the cabinet's many shelves, viewers are invited to be active participants and engage the Black image in an intimate way. A vast representation of Black female subjects, both famous and everyday women, are celebrated and honored through this archive of over 3,000 images, primarily photographed by Moneta Sleet Jr. and Isaac Sutton. The archive, made accessible to Gates by his dear friend and daughter of John and Eunice Johnson, Linda Johnson Rice, focuses on the varied lived experiences of Black women in the United States and calls attention to the power of Black women in defining American culture.

Originally housed at the Johnson Publishing Company building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Gates and Rebuild Foundation have been stewarding the Johnson Publishing Company's ephemera, periodicals, furniture, inventory, and architectural fragments for the last nine years. The exhibition complements the 12,000 volumes inside the Johnson Publishing Company Library, also housed at Stony Island Arts Bank, creating new opportunities for research, learning, artistic production, and collaboration around the archive. In addition to the physical cabinet, the exhibition will also include John H. Johnson's workout suite, trophies, and memorabilia; new drawings by Gates; and a new work comprised of bound copies of Jet and Ebony magazine, making it Gates' most comprehensive exhibition of the Johnson Publishing Company archive to date. Theaster Gates: When Clouds Roll Away: Reflection and Restoration from the Johnson Archive is a part of Gates' ongoing reflection on how the Johnson Publishing Company remains one of the most important legacies of Black culture and the Black corporate world, and his desire to activate objects toward a new life by allowing visitors to experience the objects as originally intended.

“Disrupting the notion that archives are objects frozen in time, dependent on academics to interpret, this exhibition brings to the forefront the idea of contemporary art as a new vector for understanding these rich histories and artists as the best messengers for the reactivation of old stories,” Gates said. “By presenting a uniquely Chicago history in this way, I hope to invite the viewer to rethink the centrality of archives in their own lives and the world around them.”

Theaster Gates: When Clouds Roll Away: Reflection and Restoration from the Johnson Archive will be accompanied by four major essays commissioned specifically for the exhibition in addition to the catalogue, “Facsimile Cabinet of Women Origin Stories,” written by 12 women from a variety of disciplines. The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of programs that will conclude with an archival convening which will invite specialists from around the world to gather and discuss today's shared trials and the future of the field.

Theaster Gates: When Clouds Roll Away: Reflection and Restoration from the Johnson Archive is part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that highlights the city's artistic heritage and creative communities. The exhibition is also supported by the Joyce Foundation, Linda Johnson Rice, and the Mellon Foundation, whose contributions are assisting Rebuild's efforts to completely catalog the Johnson Publishing Company Library for the first time.

Founded by artist Theaster Gates in 2010, Rebuild Foundation is a platform for art, cultural development, and neighborhood transformation. Rebuild strengthens creative communities through grants, classes, residencies, access to its collections and free public programs. The Foundation is well known for innovative, ambitious, and impactful arts and cultural initiatives, hosting projects and programs that amplify the history, value, and promise of Black creativity at local, national, and international scales. Rebuild operates a constellation of sites on the South Side of Chicago including the Stony Island Arts Bank, Retreat at the Currency Exchange Café, Dorchester Art + Housing Collaborative, Kenwood Gardens, and the forthcoming St. Laurence Arts Incubator. Rebuild Foundation is grounded in and enriched by three core values: Black people matter, Black spaces matter, and Black objects matter.

Art Design Chicago is a special citywide collaboration and series of events and exhibitions that highlight the city's unique artistic heritage and creative communities. An initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art in partnership with artists and arts organizations across the city, Art Design Chicago seeks to expand narratives of American art with an emphasis on the city's diverse and vibrant creative cultures and the stories they tell. Learn more at artdesignchicago.org.  

The Terra Foundation for American Art, established in 1978 and having offices in Chicago and Paris, supports organizations and individuals locally and globally with the aim of fostering intercultural dialogues and encouraging transformative practices that expand narratives of American art, through the foundation's grant program, collection, and initiatives. Learn more at terraamericanart.org.

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