All Things Visual: The University of Chicago Visual Resources Center

In the latest issue of The New Yorker, Chicago artist Theaster Gates is featured in a discussion of “shows that are changing the art world.”

Visit Theaster Gates’ website, and read more about his projects utilizing slide donations from the UofC Visual Resources Center here.

Lantern slides that belonged to the University of Chicago Visual Resources Center were donated to Theaster Gates’ Dorchester Project, which was featured in a recent New York Times article.

Mr. Gates has combined a former candy store, a single-family house and a duplex across the street into a site of artistic and community change for a neighborhood that has suffered years of blight and cultural neglect. The installation is an entry in a growing art movement to create “hybridized” arts spaces that serve multiple functions, taking inspiration from installations in Houston and Los Angeles, as well as in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood in a community center called the Experimental Station.

University of Chicago’s Theaster Gates currently has an installation in the Milwaukee Art Museum titled To Speculate Darkly: Theaster Gates and Dave the Potter. During Fall 2009, the Art History Department’s lantern slide collection was relocated to Gates’ Dorchester Project house for “reuse as performance material, research and speculation.” Part of that reuse includes the To Speculate Darkly installation, with the glass ceiling entrance as pictured above. For more information about the installation, see this article recently published by the Wisconsin Gazette.