In Chicago an old bank becomes a centre for art

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Theaster Gates, a black urbanist and artist in his forties has come a long way since 2010. And he has brought his city, Chicago, along with him.
At the dawn of the great sub-prime mortgage crisis in America, which forced Lehman Brothers to declare bankruptcy and sparked the worst economic crisis since 1929, Gates was a somewhat frustrated urbanist. The property crisis was a chance for him to throw himself head first into what was really closest to his heart: revitalising the rundown South Side of Chicago through concrete projects that reconcile the recovery of dilapidated buildings with the development of projects connected to the art world. The first step for Gates was to purchase a bungalow for only $16,000, which he transformed into the perfect location for artistic performances and a meeting place for intellectuals and creative people.
Today the Rebuild Foundation (which was born in 2010) owns 60 buildings throughout the city, four of which have become key centres in the cultural life of Chicago.
The Stony Island Arts Bank (photo by Tom Harris, courtesy of Rebuild Foundation)
 The Stony Island Arts Bank (photo by Tom Harris, courtesy of Rebuild Foundation)
 
The last of these, in chronological order, is the Stony Island Arts Bank, which was inaugurated this past 3 October during the Architecture Biennial. The site is an old bank, which in 2012 the mayor sold to the Foundation for the symbolic price of one dollar, challenging Gates to carry out a renovation that seemed impossible. Built in 1923, the bank had been abandoned for decades and gathering the funds necessary to renovate the 1,500 square metres of space seemed a hopeless task. Theaster Gates wasn’t discouraged and got to work implementing his usual strategy: he transformed parts of the building into works of art – in this case he used a hundred or so marble tiles that covered the walls of the bathroom, onto which he wrote “In art we trust”, selling them at Art Basel for $5,000 a piece, a strategy that brought in contributions and donations from throughout the world of art collectors.
Today the bank is a hybrid space that hosts contemporary art installations, exhibitions, temporary residences for artists and students, archives for records, books and African American objects from the black ghetto, which serve as stimuli for workshops that focus on different themes and are aimed at neighbourhood residents. And it’s precisely them, the people of colour who live in the South Side of Chicago, who are meant to be the main beneficiaries of this “gift” to the city, and who must – according to Gates – re-appropriate their own cultural heritage (for more information visit rebuild-foundation.org).
 The vault as it was before, during the renovations (photo by Tom Harris, courtesy of Rebuild Foundation).
 The vault as it was before, during the renovations (photo by Tom Harris, courtesy of Rebuild Foundation).
 
The library (photo by Tom Harris, courtesy of Rebuild Foundation).
 The library (photo by Tom Harris, courtesy of Rebuild Foundation).

Interior (photo by Steve Hall, courtesy of Rebuild Foundation). 
 Interior (photo by Steve Hall, courtesy of Rebuild Foundation).


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