RE-ENVISIONING NEIGHBORHOODS: Theaster Gates

March 8, 2014  |   Feature
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Theaster Gates talks about the artist as catalyst and change agent in communities.

Theaster Gates (front and center) is part of a generation engaged in what has come to be called “social practice”: art that flourishes outside galleries and museums and welcomes all, opening dialogues with those who live beyond its precincts. Encompassing social service, community building, object-making, and real-time discussion around economic inequity, it’s social activism through art-­making. Though the movement is well established in Europe and South America, it has only recently been on the rise in the United States and, not incidentally, just as the art market has shot to previously unseen levels.
Theaster Gates (front and center) is part of a generation engaged in what has come to be called “social practice”: art that flourishes outside galleries and museums and welcomes all, opening dialogues with those who live beyond its precincts. Encompassing social service, community building, object-making, and real-time discussion around economic inequity, it’s social activism through art-­making. Though the movement is well established in Europe and South America, it has only recently been on the rise in the United States and, not incidentally, just as the art market has shot to previously unseen levels.