How Chicago Became an Art-World Capital

Theaster Gates in his South Side studio with A Game of My Own (2017). Shirt, Maison Margiela. Jeans, Prada. Boots, his own. John Edmonds Theaster Gates has been thinking about monuments. “Young Lords and Their Traces,” his new survey at New York’s New Museum, is all about the way objects carry memories. It’s a familiar theme in Gates’s work, which often highlights the labor, craft, and life in reclaimed materials. The recent losses of some people who were important to him in different ways—like Gates’s former organ teacher and friend Alvin’s mother, Christine Carter, and his longtime colleague at the… Read Full Article