Theaster Gates discusses two of the four rooms in his exhibition, Assembly Hall, one featuring ephemera from the Johnson Publishing Company Collection—including furniture, art, and magazines from the company behind Jet and Ebony magazines—and the other selections from the Ana J. and Edward J. Williams Collection of “negrobilia.”
“These two rooms are almost like bookends of the American imagination—one imagination working to subjugate people through the creation of really negative images and another trying to uplift people through the creation of edifying images of the Black experience,” he says. “I hope one day these objects disintegrate, both physically and emotionally, that instead we have this truth of equity, this truth of dignity.”
"I am writing in and through my body, a sweet, Black, female one, parallel, and tangentially to Theaster Gates: Assembly Hall." Tia-Simone Gardner reflects on her research in archives.
How Theaster Gates Revives Forgotten History Through Forgotten Objects
Getting rid of our old stuff is easy. Holding onto it is harder. In Theaster Gates: Assembly Hall, the artist presents selections of three of his collections to call attention to the objects that exist in the material world around us, just outside of our perception. Curatorial Fellow William Hernández Luege takes a close look at one of these collections and traces its history and impact from the 19th century through the present, showing just how powerful objects and ideas can be once they are forgotten—and what it might mean to suddenly remember them.
Watch: Theaster Gates Opening-Day Talk Excerpt with Hamza Walker
"This exhibition is not about what I made as much as how Americana or the Black Power movement or the white imagination swirl around in my head. Sometimes they produce conversations and new objects. Other times they just need to be held in tension with each other." Artist Theaster Gates joins Hamza Walker, director of LAXART, for a lively discussion about Gates’s practice, the new exhibition Theaster Gates: Assembly Hall, and the artist’s work with archives and collections.
A Spiritual Belief in the Life of Things: Victoria Sung on Theaster Gates’s Assembly Hall
“How do we deal with abandonment, ruin, decay? How do we start to imagine ourselves as deeper caretakers of the things that exist in the world?” In his art, Theaster Gates reuses, reinterprets, and reimagines objects that have been abandoned, neglected, or forgotten to call attention to the potential that exists in the material world around us. Exhibition curator Victoria Sung introduces the collections that anchor the four rooms of Theaster Gates: Assembly Hall: a university's archive of art historical glass slides, a selection of material from the publishing company behind Jet and Ebony magazines, a collection of racist memorabilia, and a facsimile of Gates's own clay studio.
Creating Space for the Possibility of a Sacred Moment: Theaster Gates on Black Vessel for a Saint
"Whether people are believers in the sacred or not, can architecture, design, the arts create a moment where you feel like you're touching something that is bigger than my humanity or your humanity?" In anticipation of the opening of Theaster Gates: Assembly Hall, we share a discussion with Gates on Black Vessel for a Saint, a sculptural installation commissioned by the Walker in 2017 for the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, in which Gates discusses the secular-sacred, Black entrepreneurship, and how a traveling statue of St. Laurence finally found a permanent home.
The Struggle for Happiness, or What Is American about Black Dada
Adam Pendleton’s concept of "Black Dada"—which has guided his art making practice—melds references from LeRoi Jones's 1964 poem "Black Dada Nihilismus" and Hugo Ball's "Dada Manifesto" of 1916. To give context to Pendleton's work in the exhibition I am you, you are too, we share an essay byWalker Curator at Large Adrienne Edwards from the "overwhelmingly American assemblage" that is Pendleton's Black Dada Reader.
Dana Michel’s Mercurial George: Illegibility, Identity, Blackness
“Mercurial George is born out of necessity, out of the urgency for [Dana] Michel to steer the narrative on her own term," writes Anh Vo. "If her work has to be about blackness, at least it will be about her blackness.”
Black Lives Matter is the most significant broad-based human rights coalition for black Americans since the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. But, writes Colette Gaiter, the struggle today could not be fought in its current iterations without the contributions of Black Panthers artist Emory Douglas and others who illuminated hidden ugly racial truths in compelling and beautifully executed images.
"As an abstract painter, I work with things that I cannot see," says Jack Whitten. "Google has mapped the whole earth. We have maps of Mars. We don't have a map of the soul, and that intrigues me." Here the painter discusses Soul Map (2015), a large-scale acrylic collage on view in the exhibition Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting.
The metaphor of the table evokes images of folks coming together to break bread or discuss personal and political issues. For Seitu Jones and Theaster Gates, the table is more than a metaphor; it’s a medium. In the Twin Cities, their tables are provoking dialogue about systemic reform, in local foodways and cultural institutions. Can these conversations effect change? Or is the change the conversation itself?
