Theaster Gates Theaster Gates' practice includes sculpture, installation, performance and urban interventions that aim to bridge the gap between art and life. Gates works as an artist, curator, urbanist and facilitator and his projects attempt to instigate the creation of cultural communities by acting as catalysts for social engagement that leads to political and spatial change. Gates has exhibited and performed at the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), Studio Museum in Harlem (New York), Whitechapel Gallery (London), Art Gallery of Ontario (Canada), Punta Della Dogana (Venice) and Documenta 13 (Kassel, Germany), Kunsthaus Bregenz (Austria) and Foundazione Prada (Milan). He has received awards and grants from Artes Mundi 6, Creative Time, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics and United States Artists. Gates most ambitious project to date is the ongoing real estate development, known as "Dorchester Projects". In 2006, Gates purchased an abandoned building on 69th and Dorchester Avenue on Chicago's South Side, collaborating with architects and designers to gut and refurbish the buildings using found materials. Gates is the founder and executive director of the non-profit Rebuild Foundation, which now oversees a network of buildings across the South Side including Dorchester Projects and the Stony Island Arts Bank, as well as a Professor in the Department of Visual Art and Director of Arts and Public Life at the University of Chicago.

THEASTER GATES Biography 1996 Iowa State University, B.S. Urban Planning, Ceramics 1998 University of Cape Town, M.A. Fine Arts, Religious Studies 2006 Iowa State University, M.S. Urban Planning, Ceramics, Religious Studies Currently lives and works in Chicago Solo Exhibitions 2017 Tarry Skies and Psalms for Now, White Cube, Hong Kong The Minor Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington But To Be A Poor Race, Regen Projects, Los Angeles The Black Monastic, IHME Festival, Helsinki 2016 Heavy Sketches, Richard Grey Gallery, Chicago How to Build a House Museum, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto Black Archive, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz, Austria True Value, Fondazione Prada, Milan Processions (performance residency), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC 2015 Sanctum, Situations, Bristol Freedom of Assembly, White Cube, London 2014 The Black Monastic (performance residency), Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal 2013 Accumulated Effects of Migration, Kavi Gupta, Chicago A Way of Working, The Vera List Center for Arts and Politics, New York

My Back, My Wheel and My Will, White Cube, São Paulo; White Cube, Hong Kong 13th Ballad, MCA Chicago, Chicago To Make the Thing that Makes the Things, Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia 2012 Soul Manufacturing Corporation, Locust Projects, Miami My Labor Is My Protest, White Cube, London 2011 Theaster Gates: The Listening Room, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA An Epitaph for Civil Rights, LA MOCA, Los Angeles, CA An Epitaph for Civil Rights and Other Domesticated Structures, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL 2010 To Speculate Darkly: Theaster Gates and Dave, the Slave Potter, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee WI Dry Bones and Other Parables From the North, Brunno David Gallery and the Pulitzer Museum of Art, St. Louis, MO 2009 Holiness in Three Parts, Boots Contemporary Art Space, St. Louis, MO On Another Note: Extractions from the Chicago Jazz Archive Collection, DOVA Temporary, Chicago, IL Temple Exercises, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL Erogenous Wonder, An Installation, Salvage One, Chicago, IL Symposium on Contemporary Painting, Performance, University of Illinois, Champaign- Urbana, IL 2008 Yamaguchi in Residence, Experimental Station, one year, ongoing lifestyle performance, Chicago, IL Dinner Intervention, Culture Community #1 meets Culture Community #2, Chicago, IL Representations Series, Talking Series concentrated on the concerns and thoughts of contemporary artists of color, in partnership with the Experimental Station and Illinois Humanities Council, Chicago, IL 2007 Artists Connect, Performance Lecture, 16th Century Japanese Aesthetics, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL Uprising, Voice, Violin and Cello, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL Yamaguchi Institute, Plate Convergence, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL Recreation of the Candy Stow, Acquisition and renovation of a small South Side commercial building for dinner interventions; recycled materials, local labor, Chicago, IL Life After Qualls, African American Artists Respond to the works of Michael Qualls. Performance and sculpture at South Side Community Arts Center, Chicago, IL

Un-housed. Gentrification and the constant need for Space, Architecture and design conference, Chicago, IL 2005 Rachmaninov and the Slave Spiritual, Piano, Violin and Voice, Ames, IA The American Negro; Too good to be True, St. George Cathedral, Capetown, South Africa People of the Mud, An exhibition of 15 ceramic artists, Department of Cultural Affairs, Chicago, IL Mississippi Houses, Inax Ceramic Museum, Tokoname, Japan Facing Fuji: 10 Sculptors in Japan, Tokoname Museum of Ceramic History, Tokoname, Japan Theaster Gates, Yakimono Ceramics Exhibition, Tokoname, Japan Group Exhibitions 2017 L emozione dei COLORI nell arte, Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Rivoli 2016 In Context: Africans in America, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg The Color Line, Musée du quai Branly, Paris The Underground Museum, Non-fiction, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles 2015 Contemporary Conversations, Ottawa Residence, Ottawa SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought Forms, Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul All the World s futures, 56 th Venice Biennial, Venice 2014 Living in the Material World, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck Ebony/Jet, Studio Museum Harlem, New York Artes Mundi 6, Cardiff Prospects 3, New Orleans Experiments with Truth: Gandhi and Images of Nonviolence, Menil Collection, Houston Homeland [IN]Security: Vanishing Dreams, Dorsky Gallery, Long Island City Made By Brazilians...Creative Invasion, Cidade Matarazzo, Sao Paulo, When Stars Collide, Studio Museum, New York, NSU Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale More Material, Salon 94, New York Living in the material world, Kunstmuseum Krefeld 2013 Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, Studio Museum, New York We'll Make Out Better than Okay, The Charlotte Street Foundation's la Esquina Gallery, Kansas City

K.L.E.O. Community Family Life Center "Building a better world, one community at a time!" Mike McCann, Executive Director 119 E. GARFIELD BLVD. CHICAGO, IL 60637 773-363-6941 www.kleocenter.org October 2, 2017 Association of Fundraising Professionals 1717 N. Naper, Suite 102 Naperville, IL 60563 Re: Nomination of Theaster Gates for the 2017 Outstanding Community Leader Award To Whom it may concern: Please accept this letter as my support for the nomination of Theaster Gates for the Association of Fundraising Professionals 2017 Outstanding Community Leader award. I have had the pleasure of working with Theaster in several capacities, including providing programmatic support for the University of Chicago Art s Incubator and with collaborating on KLEO s 58unit mix-use development targeting artist residence. Extremely creative is what I know when I look at his work. His ability to take any type of material that we consider junk and create art from it, amazes me time and time again. I have watch him teach others to look at their community as beautiful neighborhood even if they lack the economic investment their surrounding communities have benefited from. Watching him teach and instruct children to bring out the artistic being in them is simply astonishing. When a youth says I am not an artist he proves to them everyone is an artist in some fashion, that is invigorating. I have known and worked with Theaster for over seven years. Theaster is an intelligent, capable, dedicated, and personable artist. He is always quick on his feet, with sensible reactions in all the

circumstances I've seen him in. I feel confident in saying that he is an Outstanding Community leader. Sincerely, Torrey L. Barrett President/CEO KLEO Center