Date
Fall 10-27-2025
Description
The Stony Island Arts Bank (SIAB) in Southside Chicago was designed and founded as a piece of art itself, with the organizational structure being a museum of Black cultural production. This article examines how the institution constructs an epistemology of Blackness through its archival practices, community programming, and spatial claims on the South Side. Founded by artist Theaster Gates through the Rebuild Foundation, the SIAB positions institutional design as an art medium, operating in productive tension with orthodox museum methods. The permanent collections—including the Johnson Publishing Company archives and Frankie Knuckles vinyl collection—function as epistemological records of Black self-documentation unmediated by external audiences. Through analysis of these collections and the institution’s community engagement, this article argues that the SIAB holds amorphous space for an alternative theory of history to arise within the conditions of Black expressivity. The critical tensions in place are preservation vs production, sanctuary vs intervention, contemporary vs historic, local vs diasporic. These tensions create space for the creation of a new theory of history around Blackness—a history where existence is claimed and Blackness is not an addition or a margin but an origin of the contemporary conditions of art. The existence of the SIAB poses a fundamental question: what happens when Black cultural production is allowed to exist undeniably?
Included in
Art and Materials Conservation Commons, Art Education Commons, Art Practice Commons, Audio Arts and Acoustics Commons, Digital Humanities Commons, Fine Arts Commons, Instructional Media Design Commons, Interactive Arts Commons, Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons, Leadership Commons, Nonprofit Administration and Management Commons, Organizational Behavior and Theory Commons, Visual Studies Commons