The Johnson Publishing Company chronicled the richness, complexity, and success stories within the Black American experience for more than seven decades, most notably through the monthly Ebony magazine and its weekly sister outlet Jet. The Chicago-based publisher was even credited with helping jumpstart the civil rights movement when founder John H. Johnson published open-coffin images of Emmett Till in 1955.
Theaster Gates has long reflected on the publisher’s legacy in his wide-ranging art practice and while developing the Rebuild Foundation, which has launched a variety of urban improvement projects aimed at Chicago’s South Side. His latest bridges the two, reimagining the derelict Stony Island Arts Bank as the headquarters of a fictional publishing enterprise in the same spirit.
The project is Gates’s most thorough celebration of the archive to date. He transformed all three floors into an architectural-scale installation called “When Clouds Roll Away: Reflection and Restoration from the Johnson Archive” that includes vintage office furniture, art, and ephemera from the company’s original offices. They join newer works, such as Facsimile Cabinet of Women’s Origin Stories, a collection of photographs of Black women from the publisher’s archives that visitors are welcome to explore and self-curate.
It all complements the 12,000 volumes stored within the publishing house’s reference library, which Gates and Rebuild are cataloging to establish a new archive laboratory at the Foundation’s soon-to-open St. Laurence Elementary School site nearby. In the meantime, visitors can enjoy a bar and lounge program, as well as a music series and writing commissions that aim for wider engagement. “The Johnson Publishing Company legacy is defined by Black entrepreneurial leadership, Black love, and Black generosity,” says Gates. “That legacy is very much alive and it’s my job to keep that legacy alive.”
“Theaster Gates: When Clouds Roll Away: Reflection and Restoration from the Johnson Archive” will be on view at the Stony Islands Art Bank (6760 S Stony Island Ave, Chicago) until March 16.
