Opening Weekend: The Black Monks Performance

Want to be the first to know when RSVPs open to the public for future Theaster Gates programming?

The celebration continues on October 5, 2025 from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm. Join Theaster Gates and The Black Monks for a performance at the University of Chicago's Bond Chapel.

RSVP is required. Registered spots will be held until the event's start at 4:00 pm, when walk-ins will be welcomed on a first-come, first-served basis. Each opening weekend program requires separate registration. Please note that space is limited, and registration in advance does not guarantee admittance once the event begins.

Cover photo: Performance by Theaster Gates (seated left) and the Black Monks of Mississippi, Smart Museum of Art, February 15, 2012. Photo by Jeremy Lawson.

Help keep the Smart and its important programming free and open to all by Thank you for supporting cultural institutions like ours in Chicago!

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The Smart Museum of Art presents Theaster Gates's first solo museum exhibition in his hometown of Chicago.

A self-designated “keeper of objects,” the artist Theaster Gates investigates the value of things and their potential to hold layered meanings. He has been dedicated to investing in the care of these objects as a way to nurture stories and voices – often Black stories and voices – largely overlooked by history or institutional structures.

The exhibition Theaster Gates: Unto Thee is rooted in several core collections of objects that have been part of Gates’s artistic practice which he acquired through the University of Chicago, where he is Professor of Visual Arts. Ranging from the Department of Art History’s glass lantern slides and display vitrines from the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (formerly the Oriental Institute), to paint-stained concrete from the floors of Midway Studios and wooden pews made for Bond Chapel, all objects have been discarded and identified as no longer needed. In creating new works with them over the years – and, as will be done again, in new installations at the Smart – Gates challenges that notion of stasis by instead excavating more histories, more stories. These installations will be accompanied by Gates’s more recent work including paintings, ceramics, film, and pieces incorporating the archive of the Johnson Publishing Company.

Rooted in materials and Gates’s interest in the process of making, Unto Thee embodies the relationships Gates has fostered within the University of Chicago, local communities, the South Side and broader Chicago. It underscores the artist’s unassailable belief in the potential of art to connect with and transform communities.

The exhibition is accompanied by a site-specific installation as part of the Museum’s Threshold Lobby Series, which will be on view through July 2026.

Host or Publisher Smart Museum of Art