What We're Reading: 4/8/22

Theaster Gates, Prada create incubator to support designers of color

The Design Lab, a collaboration between Theaster Gates’ Rebuild Foundation and Prada Group, aims to uplift and invest in designers of colors in fashion, architecture and the industrial arts.

“We spent a lot of time watching how many of the fashion houses in the design world and the museum institutions have been acknowledging and celebrating the contributions of Black artists and designers and people of color, but it felt like much of that has been marketing strategy,” said Gates, co-chair of Prada Group’s Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council.

Via Chicago Sun Times

Meet the curator on a search for Chicago’s next art star

When Jamillah James was tapped for the high-profile job of helping relaunch the Institution of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2016, she arrived with a mission: to create space for emerging artists, especially Black and brown ones.

Among the first places she searched was Chicago, where she had previously played the drums in an experimental band, dabbled in arts programming, and studied art history and theory at Columbia College.

Via WBEZ

Expo Chicago Lights Up for the First Time in Years, Drawing Dealers From Near and Quite Far

It’s been a lifetime since Expo Chicago—or at least it feels that way—which makes it just amazing to see the city’s bold Navy Pier filled out with collectors, gallerists, curators, and the like for fair’s 2022 edition.

“It’s a good excuse to bring people to town to show how strong our galleries, museums, and universities are,” Aron Gent, director of local gallery Document, said at the fair’s Thursday vernissage. 

Via Artnet

Key image: Theaster Gates. Photo credit: John R. Boehm