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Exhibition Guide for High School Teachers Walker Art Center September 5, 2019–January 12, 2020 Gallery B walkerart.org @walkerartcenter INTRODUCTION This guide is for teachers who are bringing their students to the exhibition Theaster Gates: Assembly Hall. It includes an overview of the presentation, discussion questions, and a list of additional resources to learn more about Theaster Gates, his artistic practice, race and racism in America, and black art and culture. ABOUT THE ARTIST ABOUT THE EXHIBITION American artist Theaster Gates (b. The exhibition is divided into four 1973) was born in Chicago, where he distinct sections. Included are selec- still lives and works today. Starting out tions from the University of Chicago as a ceramicist, he soon expanded his Glass Lantern Slides Collection of practice to include sculpture, installa- 60,000 images; periodicals, furniture, 1 tion, performance, and architectural and other materials from the 15,000- interventions. An important facet of his piece Johnson Publishing Company “How do we deal with work includes urban planning and revi- Collection; a range of objects from the talizing buildings—often through the Ana J. and Edward J. Williams abandonment, ruin, and use of recycled materials—in histori- Collection of “negrobilia,” displayed in decay? How do we start to cally black neighborhoods across antique cases; and ceramic pots and Chicago’s South Side. These include the other wares that the artist has made imagine ourselves and Stony Island Arts Bank and Dorchester or collected over the past decade. caretakers of the things that Projects. Gates is a trained urban Seen together, these items speak to planner and started his own nonprofit Gates’s “deep belief in the objects and exist in the world?” organization, Rebuild Foundation, to histories of African American material focus on these projects. Bringing people culture” and capture moments of cele- —Theaster Gates together, the spaces he creates serve as bration and inspiration, exclusion and galleries, libraries, and performances marginalization, renewal and invention. venues and have become catalysts for a variety of cultural activities and Assembly Hall considers what Gates communal gatherings. They also serve refers to as “resurrections,” or the act as repositories for thousands of objects of bringing old objects and spaces back that the artist has collected. to life, while examining the historical and social contexts in which they were made. His poetic interventions, which take the form of sculptural and moving image works, highlight ways that collecting is at once a personal and a universal activity. By taking things that have been abandoned, discarded, or overlooked—whether a single object or a group of 15,000—Gates asks us to consider what it means to invest things with new meaning through the simple acts of conversation, conserva- tion, creation, and care. Cover: View of the Johnson Publishing Company Collection in the exhibition Theaster Gates: Assembly Hall, Walker Art Center, 2019 Photo: Bobby Rogers, Walker Art Center 1: Theaster Gates Photo: Gene Pittman, Walker Art Center EXHIBITION GUIDE THEASTER GATES: ASSEMBLY HALL 2 UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO GLASS LANTERN SLIDES In 2009 Theaster Gates became the EXPERIENCING THE ROOM custodian of thousands of glass lantern Invite students to experience the video slides that had been used for decades projected on the walls of the room and to teach art and architectural history listen to the audio featuring clips from at the University of Chicago. The art history lectures and artist talks. slides, which the school was planning 2 to throw away as it moved to a digital Provide an overview of the room for “I am interested in not platform, are now housed in Gates’s them, explaining where the glass slides Stony Island Arts Bank on the South are from and how they were used. only found objects but also Side of Chicago. The artist oversees Make sure to point out that of the discarded knowledge.” the preservation of their visual and 60,000 images in the University of physical information. Chicago’s collection, fewer than 50 —Theaster Gates depict examples of African art. Gates’s initial interest in this collection stemmed from his desire to learn art DISCUSSION QUESTIONS history and share these resources with • Why do you think there were so few a new community. As he began to dig examples of African art in the through the collection, however, he University of Chicago’s glass lantern became more interested in the story slides collection? that emerged about how universities once taught the discipline. The collec- • What might be the result of only tion mainly holds imagery of Western teaching the history of Western (mainly European and American) art, (European/American) art in art from medieval tapestries to modern history classes? architecture, rather than a representa- tion of art from around the world. A The images projected on the walls of case in point: of the 60,000 slides, this room are a video work that Gates fewer than 50 depict examples of made by combining a selection of African art, which were originally pictures from the glass slides collection labeled “primitive art,” an outdated with photographs from the Johnson and derogatory term. Publishing Company Collection (publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines). In response to this Eurocentric narra- Take a closer look at the projections tive, Gates presents the material in a on the walls and the glass slides in way that critically and creatively high- front of the light box. lights its problematic omissions. The • How would you describe some of the artist’s video, which combines images types of artwork you’re seeing in 3 from the slides with photographs of these projections and in the glass 20th-century black culture from the slides light box? Johnson Publishing Company Collection, is a gesture toward “reading • Gates has said this video work is a blackness” into the canon of art history. way of “reading blackness” into the The slides on view in the light box focus history of art. What do you think he on what he calls “minority arts,” or means by this? works made by non-Western makers, and “minor arts,” featuring pottery, woodworking, and other craft traditions long considered to be outside of the realm of fine arts. 4 Views of the University of Chicago Glass Lantern Slides in the exhibition Theaster Gates: Assembly Hall, Walker Art Center, 2019 2, 3: A selection of glass slides displayed on a light box in the gallery 4: The artist’s film is projected on the walls, with seating for visitors in the center of the space EXHIBITION GUIDE THEASTER GATES: ASSEMBLY HALL 3 JOHNSON PUBLISHING COMPANY COLLECTION Founded in Chicago in 1942, the A SPACE FOR READING Johnson Publishing Company (JPC) soon In the center of the room, visitors are became known internationally as the welcome to take a seat and read the preeminent African American publisher magazines on display. Please do not of Ebony and Jet magazines. John H. touch the furniture, books, or other and Eunice Johnson created publica- objects elsewhere in the gallery. tions and products that directly addressed the lives of black Americans. Give students a few minutes to look 5 From its in-depth reporting on the civil around the room and encourage them “John H. Johnson and Eunice rights movement to its lifestyle articles to flip through the magazines on the and fashion photography, the company center table. Johnson understood that helped shape the identity of a black image-making goes hand in middle class during its 76-year run. For DISCUSSION QUESTIONS generations of readers, JPC stood for • How would you describe the feel and hand with identity forma- self-invention, self-empowerment, and style of this room? What does it say tion, which goes hand in self-determinism. about how the Johnson Publishing Company presented itself? hand with nation-building.” In 1971 JPC opened its new headquar- —Theaster Gates ters in downtown Chicago. A city • What other companies or individuals landmark, the building was the first would you associate with delivering a and remains the only high-rise in the message about the celebration of area designed by a black architect, black excellence? How do they John W. Moutoussamy. Through its 11 deliver this message? custom-made floors—reflecting the pinnacle of what the company referred to as midcentury African modernism— the building represented the Johnsons’ bold, experimental ethos and an overall celebration of black excellence. The company sold the historic building 6 in 2011, but its original furnishings and iconic publications, totaling 15,000 objects, have been preserved by Gates at his Stony Island Arts Bank. The artist’s interest in architectural spaces is evident in this gallery, which features JPC furnishings that he has restored or reimagined with new fabrics and colors, along with a sampling of artworks by African and African American artists. Also on view are bound copies of Ebony, Jet, and other Johnson publications. 7 5–7 (top to bottom): A selection of Ebony maga- zines and furnishings from the Johnson Publishing Company Collection in Theaster Gates: Assembly Hall, Walker Art Center, 2019 EXHIBITION GUIDE THEASTER GATES: ASSEMBLY HALL 4 ANA J. AND EDWARD J. WILLIAMS COLLECTION This collection was shaped by Edward J. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS Williams, a now-retired businessman • Many of these mass-produced racist who grew up on the South Side of objects are ordinary household Chicago and became the first African items, such as salt and pepper American male employee of Harris shakers or a brand of pancake syrup. Bank. In the 1970s he found his first How might these objects have item of “negrobilia”—everyday strengthened racism in the United consumer objects that feature racist States? stereotypes of black people—in an antique shop in Indiana.

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