Theaster Gates is an acclaimed artist, musician, community organizer, urban planner and developer and cultural entrepreneur. He is visiting Akron to speak on the importance of the artist as an entrepreneur at the Akron Roundtable. The artist’s Roundtable presentation will take place on Thursday, September 15, 2016 at 12:00 p.m. at the Quaker Station on the campus of The University of Akron, and is sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The talk and luncheon is presented in conjunction with the Akron Art Museum, Downtown Akron Partnership and GAR Foundation. Tickets for the luncheon are $20.00 and are available at www.akronroundtable.org.

The Black Monks of Mississippi are an experimental musical ensemble organized by Gates. Often joined by musical monks from around the world, the performers harmonize Eastern ideals of melodic restraint with the spirit of gospel in the Black Church and the soul of the Blues. Together, they serve to musically enrich and emotionally activate many of Gates’ exhibitions into transcendent and participatory experiences, uniting holiness and humanness, restraint and the ecstatic.

In Chicago, Gates’ leadership of artist-led spaces has catalyzed an evolution in perceptions of some of the most underserved parts of the city. Beginning with interventions in small-scale residences, now known as Dorchester Projects, Gates’ houses in Greater Grand Crossing became a nexus for globally engaged experiments in structures of individual and collective living, working and art-making. Launched into the international art world as 12 Ballads for Huguenot House at dOCUMENTA13, the houses embodied a new system of values not only in the austere yet inviting atmosphere incorporating once-discarded materials as design elements, but in the ongoing, flexible use of the spaces and the creation of new relationships and opportunities among artists, visitors and students.

At the University of Chicago, Gates is a Professor in the Department of Visual Arts and the College, and Director of Arts + Public Life which is housed at the Arts Incubator in Washington Park. He also leads an urban research initiative known as Place Lab—a team of social scientists, architects, creative professionals and business leaders. With support from the Knight Foundation, Gates and his team create frameworks for reimagining the role that culture plays in the redevelopment of transforming African American communities. Gates is helping to define the future of artistic place-based efforts, in research and practice.

Gates is also the founder and Artistic Director of Rebuild Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that endeavors to rebuild the cultural foundations of neighborhoods and incite movements of community revitalization that are culture based, artist led, and neighborhood driven.