Theaster Gates Headshot
Report a problem with this profile
[email protected]

Theaster Gates          

Director of Arts and Public Life at the University of Chicago; Founder & President of Rebuild Foundation

Theaster Gates is founder and president of the Rebuild Foundation and director of arts program development at the University of Chicago. He is an artist, musician, and “cultural planner.” In his performances, installations, and urban interventions, Gates transforms spaces, institutions, traditions, and perceptions. Gates’s training as an urban planner and sculptor, and his subsequent time spent in Japan studying clay, has given him keen awareness of the poetics of production and systems of organizing. With this experience, Gates has assembled gospel choirs, formed temporary unions, and used systems of mass production as a way of underscoring the need that industry has for the body. When Theaster is not making art for museums, he is committed to the restoration of poor black neighborhoods, converting abandoned buildings into cultural spaces. Gates was a Loeb fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Design and has received awards from the Joyce Foundation and the Graham Foundation.

In 2019, fashion label Prada announced Theaster Gates, alongside Ava DuVernay, will be co-chair of the Prada Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council.

News


Prada announces artist and activist, Theaster Gates, and film director and producer Ava Duvernay, will co-chair the Prada Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council
“We will help ensure that the fashion world is reflective of the world in which we live,” says Miuccia Prada.
Could Theaster Gates have a role to play at 50 shuttered CPS ...
Could Theaster Gates' next grand project be tackling the 50 vacant and in many cases beautiful school buildings closed by the city three years ago?
Theaster Gates Wants to Turn Former Chicago Police Station Into Art ...
Chicago artist Theaster Gates has revealed plans to establish an arts center in a disused police station on the city's South Side. The police station was shuttered ...
Artist Theaster Gates on 'Brilliant Ideas' - Bloomberg
Born in Chicago in 1973, Theaster Gates is a visual artist, social activist, urban planner, musical performer and Professor of Visual Art at the University of ...
Chicago artist Theaster Gates plans performance series in D.C. ...
For his latest art project, Theaster Gates is bringing together music, museums and collegiate athletics.

Related Speakers View all


More like Theaster