© AP Photo/Tony Dejak.
Materials from the gazebo where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot in 2014 by Cleveland police are now on view at Theaster Gates’ Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago. The gazebo’s wood and brackets are stacked alongside memorial objects and ephemera left by the community ahead of the site’s dismantling in 2016. Gates told The Art Newspaper, “This seemingly insignificant piece of architecture allows us to deeply examine the racial, political and economic crises of this country.”
Tamir’s mother, Samaria Rice, prevented the City of Cleveland from demolishing the gazebo, intending to preserve it as a place for care and engagement. Now, the Arts Bank has organized a series of conversations with archivists, historians, scholars, and artists to contextualize the materials through the winter of 2018. There are plans to reinstall the gazebo outdoors on the Stony Island Arts Bank lawn next year.
Also this week:
- Andrea Zittel celebrated the fifteen-year anniversary of her nonprofit High Desert Test Sites—the subject of a 2015 Art21 Extended Play film.
- Hiroshi Sugimoto designed a lobby garden for the Japan Society in New York.
- And Mel Chin announced his first augmented-reality project, Unmoored, coming to Times Square next year.
Events & exhibitions
New York City
- On Wednesday a new solo exhibition by Arturo Herrera is opening at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. Entitled Paintings, the show is the artist’s first comprised entirely of works on canvas, and will be on view through January 20.
- Thursday, November 30 at 7pm—Catherine Opie will be giving the annual Walter Annenberg Lecture at the Whitney, where she’ll speak about her practice and the power of photography.
- Saturday, December 2 and Sunday, December 3—The New Museum is celebrating its 40th anniversary this weekend with a series of artists in dialogue. Entitled “Who’s Afraid of the New Now?,” the two-day event will feature artists Lynda Benglis, Mary Heilmann, Joan Jonas, Jeff Koons, Paul McCarthy, Raymond Pettibon, and Doris Salcedo among others.
Chicago
- Friday, December 1 at noon—Cai Guo-Qiang will be giving a lecture at the University of Chicago, followed by the performance of a new gunpowder work as part of the school’s event series “Reactions: New Perspectives on our Nuclear Legacy,” marking the 75th anniversary of the first nuclear reaction.
Miami
- On Friday a new Miami museum is celebrating its grand opening with the exhibition The Everywhere Studio, featuring work by Andrea Zittel. The inaugural exhibition will be open at the new Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami through February 26, 2018.
San Francisco
- A video installation of Edgar Arceneaux’s Until, Until, Until… is opening Friday at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts alongside his work Library of Black Lies—both featured in the artist’s Season 8 segment. On view through March 25, 2018, Until, Until, Until… will be performed live in the gallery space February 22–24.
Los Angeles
- Wednesday, November 29 at 7pm—Chronicle Books is hosting a pop-up exhibition and book signing with William Wegman at Marc Selwyn Fine Art to promote the artist’s newly released book, Being Human.
- November 30 – December 3—Tesseract, a performative collaboration with choreography by Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener, mixed and projected live by Charles Atlas, is coming to REDCAT this weekend as part of the Sharon Disney Lund Dance Series.
Mexico City
- kurimanzutto’s latest exhibition Never Free to Rest presents works that use abstraction to question the history of Black representation and systems of control. On view through December 16, the show features work by Mark Bradford, Julie Mehretu, and Kara Walker among others.
Buenos Aires
- A new solo exhibition by Ai Weiwei opened last week at Fundación Proa. Dedicated to the artist’s public work and interventionist pieces, Inoculation is on view through April 3, 2018.
London
- Wednesday, November 29 at 7pm—Katharina Grosse will discuss her practice and her current solo exhibition at South London Gallery with artist Bharti Kher as part of the event series, open—talks.
Paris
- Friday, December 1 at 2pm—Theaster Gates will be performing with his experimental musical ensemble, The Black Monks of Mississippi, in spiritual transmissions from gospel to Blues at Centre Pompidou.
Amsterdam
- The Amsterdam Light Festival kicks off this Thursday, and features a special installation by Ai Weiwei. The artist’s thinline will run like a red thread of light along the entire route of the festival’s water exhibition, which will continue through January 21, 2018.