Theaster Gates: Assembly Hall

Curated by Victoria Sung with William Hernández Luege, the exhibition brings together Theaster Gates’s sculptures, installation, performance, and architectural interventions.

“Assembly Hall” brings a number of Gates’s collections into a museum context for the first time. The exhibition space is transformed into a total work of art that transposes several of the artist’s vast collections and studio environment into four immersive rooms, each infused with his poetic interventions. Included are selections from 60,000 slides of art/architectural history from the University of Chicago Glass Lantern Slides; books, periodicals, furniture, and other ephemera from the 15,000-piece Johnson Publishing Company Collection; a range of objects from the Ana J. and Edward J. Williams Collection of “negrobilia”; and ceramic pots and other wares that the artist has made or collected over the past decade.