Stony Island Arts Bank 6760 S Stony Island Ave

By KEVIN NANCE

On October 3 information technology will have been a year since the Stony Island Arts Bank, one of the most remarkable new cultural projects on Chicago's S Side in retentivity, opened its doors to the public. As the Arts Depository financial institution—the brainchild of the multimedia artist Theaster Gates—prepares to gloat its first anniversary, the hybrid visual arts gallery, music venue and African-American heritage institution tin pride itself on a solid start to a long life of service to its neighborhood and across.

The handsome granite Arts Banking company building, designed by the prominent builder William Gibbons Uffendell and constructed in 1923 at 6760 Southward. Stony Island Ave., was once a stately savings-and-loan institution serving the Greater Chiliad Crossing neighborhood. But by the time Gates caused the edifice in 2012, just weeks before it likely would have been demolished by the urban center, the depository financial institution was in shambles.

Abandoned for nearly xxx years, the 17,000-square-foot structure had suffered decades of rain pouring in through holes in the ceiling; in the basement-level vault, where rows of metal safe-eolith boxes all the same gleamed, storm water stood breast-high. Nearly a tertiary of the ornate coffered plasterwork on the ceiling of the outset-floor nifty hall had crashed to the flooring below.

"People who live in this neighborhood walked past this building for 30 years, and saw information technology literally falling apart at their feet and above their heads," says Amy Schachman, manager of strategic operations at the Rebuild Foundation, the nonprofit group that oversees the Arts Bank and other Gates projects. "It's a legacy of neglect simply also a legacy of possibility."

To go on that legacy conspicuously visible to visitors, Gates and his squad of architects chose not to restore the building to its original pristine state, just rather to go out much of the damaged surfaces—including the coffered ceiling, interior columns and inner walls of the first floor—substantially untouched. Intermixed with those areas are several newly designed and constructed spaces, such as the high-ceilinged second-floor room that at present houses the 16,000-volume Johnson Publishing Library, complete with a shelving system congenital in part with reclaimed railroad ties from the nearby tracks that give the neighborhood its name.

"By showing what was lost and what was salvageable, past keeping this mixture of old and new, we made an intentional decision to say, 'Something can be this far gone and you can bring it back,'" Schachman says. "You can make it beautiful, and y'all tin can brand it an amenity for the people who live in the neighborhood likewise as those who come up from further away. If you can have a building this large, and this far gone, and bring it dorsum, that's a pretty strong testament to the work that we're able to do across this neighborhood and that Theaster is doing throughout the South Side."

Although the renovation is still non consummate and may never be—"Never," Schachman repeats, noting that the building is in a "constant state of reinvention" in response to Gates'due south elastic vision, the capacity of the 12-person staff and the needs of the neighborhood—the Arts Banking concern has now settled into something like a comfy routine. Open up to the public Tuesday through Saturday from apex until seven p.g., the Arts Banking concern offers a regular schedule of activities that include live music on Thursday afternoons and, on Fridays, Firm Tea, during which DJs spin music from the Frankie Knuckles collection of vinyl business firm music recordings housed on the third floor every bit visitors are treated to home-brewed tea.

Patrons can view an ongoing rotation of outside exhibitions – such every bit a recent bear witness of photographs past Ghanaian street photographer and portraitist James Barnor – as well as shows drawn from the various in-house collections, including over 60,000 glass lantern slides of fine art and architectural history, inherited from the University of Chicago; the Edward J. Williams collection of "negrobilia," often mass-produced objects and artifacts with sometimes stereotypical images of African-Americans; and a collection of older books on blackness civilisation and history, recently decommissioned and donated to the Arts Bank by the DuSable Loftier School library.

The Arts Bank features regular orientation sessions exploring the Johnson Publishing Library, which includes, among other things, spring editions of Ebony and Jet magazines. As Schachman puts information technology, "We're always having people come in to look up the 1972 Ebony considering their uncle'due south motion picture was in information technology."

What's it like to work at the Arts Depository financial institution every day? "Wonderful," says Demecina Beehn, outreach and engagement manager. "To be surrounded by such beauty and such amazing collections, to be able to meet the enthusiastic people who come up in every day—it'due south merely breathtaking."

Special activities to commemorate the Bank's showtime anniversary are in the works. These were non firmed up at printing time, but Schachman promises "a lot of music and a lot of late nights." She adds, "It'due south hard to sum upwardly concisely what we're all most—hybridity is key," Schachman explains. "There's not a single respond that captures everything we're trying to do. And so when people inquire that question when they're right exterior, we just say, 'Come in. Figure out for yourself what's interesting to you.'"

Height image: The first-floor principal hall of the Stony Island Arts Bank features a mix of partially restored as well as newly designed spaces such as the Johnson Publishing Library (higher up). Photo: Kevin Nance

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Source: https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news/2016/8/stony-island-arts-bank-one-year-later