Theaster Gates: The Gift and The Renege presents work by the acclaimed Chicago-based artist, featuring large-scale paintings, sculptures, and installations that highlight the seen and unseen dynamics of Freedmen’s Town in Houston’s Fourth Ward. Throughout his career, Theaster Gates has soulfully elevated our understanding of Black labor, materials, place, and community to revitalize underrecognized neighborhoods by combining urban planning and a multifaceted art practice. His work powerfully highlights the true value Black spaces hold—although often devalued—as sites of American resilience, liberation, and redemption. Gates is a shape-shifter, a world-builder, and an artist who singularly connects the dots in both poetic and pragmatic ways. For over 20 years he has worked to transform the Southside of Chicago through various initiatives aimed at preserving and continuing the neighborhood's vital role as a site for Black creativity. His multifaceted practice, which demonstrates the dual importance of building community and exposing power structures, has made him one of the most significant artists working in our time.
As Houston’s mother ward, Freedmen’s Town is a community first built by newly freed Black people, who formed a vibrant community anchored by handmade and laid brick streets. Those same brick streets today serve as the enduring reminder of the possibility of Black places. The Gift and The Renege points to the historical battle the residents of Freedmen’s Town have waged to protect their history and heritage. The exhibition uplifts the radical imagination necessary to realize the historic bricks' full preservation and sacred return to their rightful home in the streets of Freedmen’s Town. Gates is deeply committed to supporting the preservation and growth of overlooked Black neighborhoods. His work takes the form of a kind of urban alchemy that both reframes longstanding tensions between municipal policy and a community’s desire for self-determination and offers a powerful reminder of the necessity of persistence and creativity.