Theaster Gates: The Listening Room

When Dr. Wax (a small record shop on Chicago’s South Side) shuttered, 2011 Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Fellow Theaster Gates moved the closing inventory to his art complex Dorchester Projects, where a resident artist explored it through potluck listening sessions this summer. The 8,000 LPs from the ’60s to the ’80s include one of Chicago’s best jazz collections, as well as a complete Adventures in Negro History series, Dr. Martin Luther King’s A Knock at Midnight and other rarities. Gates told a Slog reporter earlier this year that he’d like to build a “soul lounge” at SAM, where people can chill out and “talk about things that are hard, via things that are much easier.”