Events

Theaster Gates Named Inaugural Speaker for the Sam Gilliam Lecture Series at John Hopkins University

Posted: 1 December 2025

Theaster Gates at his studio. Photo: Chris Strong. Courtesy Theater Gates Studio

Visit Artist Page

6pm

11 December 2025

Washington, D.C.

Theaster Gates is one of the inaugural speakers in the new Sam Gilliam Lecture Series at the John Hopkins University Bloomberg Center. The series welcomes prominent artists and thinkers to reflect on the role that art plays in society, considering the intersections of contemporary art practice, public policy and academia.

The lecture series was established to honour the artistic legacy and social justice commitments of the late Washington, D.C. based artist Sam Gilliam and is made possible by the Sam Gilliam Foundation.

Gates’s lecture will draw from his decades-long investment in interrogating the imagined precarity of Black institutions and demonstrating the role that artists can play in reifying archives as living vehicles for the valorisation, amplification and preservation of under-celebrated histories. His lecture will follow a lecture by art and cultural historian Sarah Lewis.

Register here