Theaster Gates and Rebuild Foundation’s opening of The Land School

The Land School, the newest experimental spatial project by artist Theaster Gates and Rebuild, opens this September on Chicago’s South Side following a decade-long transformation. Formerly the St. Laurence Elementary School, a Catholic primary school that was shuttered in 2002, the building has undergone a major renovation since Theaster Gates and Rebuild Foundation acquired it in 2014.

The Land School will deepen Gates and Rebuild’s mission of reconstituting underused and uncared-for spaces on the South Side, transfiguring histories of land dispossession through artist-led spatial and archival projects.

Rooted in artistic excellence, skill transference, alternative archival stewardship and radical approaches to land management and urban planning, The Land School will be a site of creative, pedagogical, and process-driven experimentation. The Land School will continue the spirit of the school as a site for rigorous engagement with artists, theorists, practitioners, and neighbours interested in the role of materials, objects, and space in community self-determination.

Gates and Rebuild will consecrate The Land School with a day-long, site-specific musical, filmic, pedagogical, and sculptural programme in partnership with The Land School's inaugural fellows and artists-in-residence. The inaugural programme, hosted just days after the organisation completes the reconstruction of the building, will mark the first public opportunity to be welcomed into the space since the acquisition of the building a decade ago.