People come and go, but objects can live forever. The ordinary photograph or the unexpected church pew has the ability to take on varied uses and purpose over time. Objects age and evolve, as they pass from person to person and place to place, accumulating histories far deeper than may meet the eye.
In “Unto Thee,” currently on exhibit at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art, Theaster Gates presents his audience with a collection of seemingly ordinary things — slate from a roof, ceramics, a bookcase — and gives them a difficult task: to read the story behind the object and think about why it matters today.
Born in Chicago, Mr. Gates is a visual artist and urban planner. He is well-known for his restoration of building structures and exploring the “spirit within things.” Specifically, his purchase and restoration of abandoned buildings on Chicago’s South Side, including the Stony Island Arts Bank, have resulted in reimagined cultural and artistic spaces.
Mr. Gates is also a professor at the University of Chicago, and many of the objects featured in “Unto Thee” were acquired over the years through his relationship with the university and the department of visual arts.
“‘Unto Thee’ is an exhibition that explores my own relationship with accumulation,” Mr. Gates said in a video on the Smart museum’s Instagram profile. “I’m really interested in these objects that tell significant stories about my kind of intertwined relationship with the University of Chicago and with materials on the South Side.”
“African Still Life #3: A Tribute to Partic McCoy and Marva Jolly” is representative of Mr. Gates’ artistry. Located in the Smart Museum lobby, the installation spans the entry wall and immediately draws the visitor to engage with African artifacts, ceramics and the sounds of Caribbean music, jazz, British R&B and reggae.
According to the wall label, “African Still Life #3” “serves as an homage to Chicago’s South Side as well as friends and collectors who had supported Gates early in his artistic career.”
In addition to the various pieces of his collection on display, there is a dark room to the left side of the exhibit where pictures of artifacts, ceramics and photography are projected onto the walls for viewers to see. Sitting in this space on the church pews inherited by Mr. Gates from the Bond Chapel in 2013, viewers can watch as the images jump from wall to wall in a multi-channel video entitled “Art histories: A Reprise.”
A particularly intriguing aspect of the exhibition is a bookcase holding a collection of Russian literature once owned by Robert James Douglas Bird, a University of Chicago professor who died in 2020.
Perhaps recognizing the oddity of its inclusion, a letter from Christina Kiaer, wife of Dr. Bird, displayed on the bookcase, presents the question of why Mr. Gates gave Dr. Bird’s collection a space in the show.
“You will ask, and exhibition goers will also wonder: What is this meeting? What is my library of Russian literature, cinema, and philosophy doing here, in the midst of Theaster’s Black aesthetic space?” Ms. Kiaer wrote.
This question touches on the exact exploration Mr. Gates hopes to achieve by his accumulation of objects: to see how the stories behind objects intertwine to expand narratives and explain human experiences.
In the case of the book collection, its inclusion suggests the importance of appreciating different views and perspectives.
“I think you know the answer,” Ms. Kiaer responds to her own rhetorical question. “It’s the care for the archive and its heavy weight of histories and knowledges, as well as its promise, that animates you both.”
For Ms. Kiaer, in regard to both her late husband and the bookcase, they remain present through their shared history. The addition to the exhibit furthers Mr. Gates’ examination of the capacity of history to illuminate life today.
Theaster Gates: “Unto Thee” is on display at the Smart Museum through Feb. 22, 2026. Admission to the museum and exhibit is free.
