Theaster Gates to Speak at the Sam Gilliam Lecture Series at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center on Dec. 11, 2025

Washington, D.C. (November 6, 2025) — Johns Hopkins University and the Sam Gilliam Foundation announced that Theaster Gates, the renowned artist and civic and social innovator, will lead the next lecture in the Sam Gilliam Lecture Series at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 11, 2025. Gates is the second speaker in the series that was established to honor the life and legacy of the late artist Sam Gilliam (1933–2022). The series invites prominent artists and thinkers to the university’s Washington, D.C., hub to reflect on the intersections between contemporary art, academia, and public policy, and the role art plays in advancing democracy. The lecture series is free and open to the public.

“We are inspired by Theaster Gates’ work and look forward to a discussion that draws on the spirit of Sam Gilliam’s life and legacy,” said Cybele Bjorklund, executive director of the Hopkins Bloomberg Center. “We are honored to host him and are grateful to Annie Gawlak and the Sam Gilliam Foundation for making this important conversation possible.”

Gates’ lecture will draw from his decades-long investment in interrogating and reimagining the role that artists and institutions play in stewarding and activating archives as living vehicles for the valorization, amplification, and preservation of undercelebrated histories, adding to the dialogue from his current show, Unto Thee, at the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago that investigates the value of things and their potential to hold layered meanings.

Gates’ practice, spanning sculpture, installation, performance, urban planning, and land art, centers on the idea of Black space and explores how artistic creation can shape social, economic, and spiritual transformation. Through initiatives such as Rebuild, he has transformed Chicago’s South Side into a nexus for cultural production and community-based collaboration. His participation in the Sam Gilliam Lecture Series reflects Gilliam’s own belief in the transformative role of artists as civic catalysts.

“Theaster is deeply engaged in the intersection of art and social justice, using his creative work and ideas to explore identity, racial equity, and the transformative power of art—values that Sam championed,” said Annie Gawlak, president of the Sam Gilliam Foundation. “I’m honored that he is part of the Sam Gilliam Lecture Series, embodying Sam’s visionary practice and his commitment to democratizing access to art.”

Established in partnership with the Sam Gilliam Foundation, the Sam Gilliam Lecture Series debuted earlier this year with art historian Sarah Lewis. It will continue in 2026, with additional speakers to be announced, and is part of the wide suite of free public arts programming offered by the Hopkins Bloomberg Center, which is also home to the Irene and Richard Frary Gallery.

The gallery features rotating art exhibitions that draw from the university’s collections and special exhibitions in partnership with leading museums and collections. On view at the time of Gates’ lecture is Ceremony, a major solo exhibition of new work by artist Lindsay Adams, who was most recently commissioned to create a site-specific installation for the new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. Drawing on Adams’ background in international studies and cultural anthropology, the exhibition explores the histories of Black movement, migration, and world-building by placing new works in conversation with never-before-seen ephemera from the Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries collection. On view from Oct. 29, 2025, through March 7, 2026, Ceremony invites visitors to imagine alternate spaces of joy, safety, and reflection through Adams’ gestural brush strokes that unfurl into abstract landscapes.

About the Sam Gilliam Lecture Series

Launched in partnership between Johns Hopkins University and the Sam Gilliam Foundation, the lecture series celebrates Gilliam’s pioneering contributions to postwar abstraction and his deep commitments to social justice, racial equity, and democratizing access to art. The series leverages the mission of the Hopkins Bloomberg Center—to connect knowledge and research with policymaking—by providing a public platform for dialogue between artists, academics, and civic leaders.

The inaugural lecture, held on April 9, 2025, featured Sarah Lewis, founder of Vision & Justice, in conversation with Leah Wright Rigueur, associate professor of history at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins.

About Sam Gilliam

Sam Gilliam (1933–2022) was a pioneering African American artist renowned not only for his great innovations in postwar American art, but also his deep commitments to issues of social justice, racial equity, and democratizing access to art. Having moved to Washington, D.C., in 1962 and living there throughout his prolific artmaking career, Gilliam had a long-standing and deep relationship with the city throughout the Civil Rights Movement and other periods of extreme change in the nation.

Attendees at the lectures will also be able to visit a permanent installation by Gilliam on the Center’s ground floor, A Lovely Blue And ! (2022), among the final works created by the artist in the months before his death. The work encapsulates Gilliam’s belief in the efficacy of abstraction and the value of risk-taking. On public view in the Center’s pre-function space, the monumental 96-by-240-inch painting exemplifies Gilliam’s expanded notion of the canvas as a three-dimensional object, showcasing the signature beveled-edge format he debuted in the 1960s and returned to in his later years.

The lecture series will complement existing arts programming at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center, which includes art exhibitions in the Irene and Richard Frary Gallery; music and dance performances from the Johns Hopkins Peabody Conservatory faculty, students, and guest artists in a cutting-edge 375-seat theater; and literature, film screenings, and other humanities events that weave the arts into discussions on contemporary social and policy issues.

About Theaster Gates

Theaster Gates is an artist whose practice finds roots in conceptual formalism, sculpture, space theory, land art, and performance. Trained in urban planning and within the tradition of Japanese ceramics, Gates’ artistic philosophy is guided by the concepts of Shintoism, Buddhism, and Animism—most notably honoring the “spirit within things.” Foundational to Gates’ practice is his custodianship and critical redeployment of culturally significant Black objects, archives, and spaces. Through the expansiveness of his approach as a thinker, maker, and builder, Gates extends the life of disappearing and bygone histories, places, traditions, and loved ones.

Gates has exhibited and performed at The LUMA Foundation, Arles, France (2023); The New Museum, New York USA (2022); The Aichi Triennale, Tokoname, Japan (2022); The Serpentine Pavilion, London, UK (2022); The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK (2021); Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2013 and 2021); Tate Liverpool, UK (2020); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2020); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2019); Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2019); Sprengel Museum Hannover, Germany (2018); Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2018); National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., USA (2017); Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada (2016); Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy (2016); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2016); Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy (2013); and dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany (2012).

Gates is the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees including the Isamu Noguchi Award (2023); National Building Museum Vincent Scully Prize (2023); Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts (2022); an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Institute of British Architects (2021); the World Economic Forum Crystal Award (2020); J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development (2018); Nasher Sculpture Prize (2018); Sprengel Museum Kurt Schwitters Prize (2017); and Artes Mundi 6 Prize (2015).

About the Hopkins Bloomberg Center

The Hopkins Bloomberg Center pairs the power of nearly 150 years of research leadership with a deep commitment to democracy and government partnership in a vibrant new convening space. Building on Johns Hopkins’ history as the nation’s first research university, the Hopkins Bloomberg Center serves as a nexus for trusted academic experts, global leaders, policymakers, artists and students to partner in finding solutions to global challenges and opportunities for human advancement. State-of-the-art facilities offer dynamic learning experiences and adapt to emerging disciplines.

About the Sam Gilliam Foundation

Established in 2023, the Sam Gilliam Foundation advances the vision and values of abstract artist Sam Gilliam by organizing and supporting significant exhibitions of the artist’s work, fostering new research and publications, and collaborating with arts organizations and institutions on initiatives that extend Gilliam’s generosity and enthusiasm for supporting emerging and longtime artists, art students, scholars, curators, and the cultural ecosystem at large. Helmed by Annie Gawlak, the Foundation serves as a primary resource on the artist and a steward of his collection and archive, with important holdings of Gilliam’s work in a variety of mediums and original papers and materials pertaining to his life and work. Since its activation, the Foundation has expanded its mission to champion the work of rising artists by establishing the Sam Gilliam Award in partnership with Dia Art Foundation in 2023, and to continue Gilliam’s legacy by launching the Gilliam Visiting Artist Program in collaboration with the Speed Art Museum in 2024