An exhibition by Joyce Award winning potter, musician, and performance artist, Theaster Gates Jr., will run from April 16 through August 1, 2010 at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

In this exhibition, Gates explores the history and legacy of Dave Drake (also known as Dave the Potter). A slave in antebellum South Carolina, Drake produced stoneware pottery and famously adorned his pots with poetic couplets. Though historians and art historians have explored Drake’s career in detail, Gates is the first artist to reinterpret his work and to make it pertinent to a broader set of concerns about the place of labor and craft in present-day America. The exhibition’s provocative installation, titled To Speculate Darkly: Theaster Gates and Dave the Potter, features a two hundred-strong voice choir that engages the enigmatic, emotional works of poetry found on Drake’s pots. Gates created the captivating sound piece with musicians from both Milwaukee and Chicago. Gates further collaborated with local tradespeople to develop original ceramic works for the show. Thus, the project, as intended, has brought together two very different groups of people in partnership, and promises to create lasting relationships across the city.

Read more about the exhibition

Chicago Art Magazine article on Theaster's exhibition

Newcity on Theaster Gates and his upcoming exhibition