Harpo Foundation is pleased to support Theaster Gates' Town Hall project, an expansive effort to develop a new cultural infrastructure in North Omaha, Nebraska, in conjunction with Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.

Theaster Gates is an artist, urban planner, and social catalyst among artists, activists and audiences. His work engages issues of race, class and place through performance, site interventions, micro-development and sculpture. Gates' work begins with his "right to re-envision Place�as art, and as a way of living." To develop this renewed sense of place he initiates conversations with institutions and diverse communities about race and culture and seeks out spaces of urban ecstasy.

Town Hall includes the commission of a major new work, a Bemis Center exhibition, and multiple public programs and performances. The Town Hall commission will result in Gates� planting a Bemis Center annex in North Omaha, the poorest and most concentrated African-American community in the city. Gates will launch the Town Hall annex by renovating an existing property, whose restoration and subsequent programming will activate and directly impact the surrounding urban and social fabric of North Omaha.

As with his previous work, Town Hall will offer enlivened models for public space, cooperation and ingenuity. (Source: Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts grant proposal)

For more information about the artist, visit here.