milestones, such as the 1963 March on Washington, these publications also emphasized the richness, complexity and
specificity of Black life in America: domestic expressions of style and standards of beauty, social and familial customs and,
perhaps most significantly, an affirmative representation of Black history and its fundamental importance to American
society. All told, Ebony and Jet offered an expansive celebration of Black success and culture more broadly, providing in turn
a necessary counter, in both narrative and imagistic terms, to stereotypes so regularly used in the mainstream press.
Theaster Gates often employs fabulation, parafiction, and propaganda as methods for the creation of new realities. Often
born from preexisting truths, these new fictions imbue personal and cultural histories with new social, political, and artistic
value. For When Clouds Roll Away, he will activate all three floors of the Stony Island Arts Bank, reimagining the formerly
abandoned South Side financial institution as the headquarters for a fictive, contemporary Black publishing company in the
spirit of the Johnson Publishing legacy. This architectural-scale installation, which will host an active bar and lounge
program, music series, and writing commissions reflecting on the archive, will experimentally extend the empire of
Johnson Publishing Company under Gates’s artistic and creative direction. These works will be shown for the first time in
their entirety in the United States, and notably, in Chicago, the former home and headquarters of Johnson Publishing Company.
When Clouds Roll Away continues Gates’ ongoing artistic and academic reflections on the Johnson Publishing Company and its legacy as one of the most important Black corporations, a rarity at the time of its founding. Originally housed at the Johnson Publishing Company building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Gates and Rebuild Foundation have been stewarding the Johnson Publishing Company’s library, ephemera, periodicals, furniture, inventory, and architectural fragments for over a decade. For the first time ever, Gates will exhibit newly restored objects, vintage office furniture, works of art owned by Johnson, along with his workout suite, trophies and memorabilia, making it his most comprehensive celebration of the archive to date.