Theaster Gates discusses two of the four rooms in his exhibition, Assembly Hall, one featuring ephemera from the Johnson Publishing Company Collection—including furniture, art, and magazines from the company behind Jet and Ebony magazines—and the other selections from the Ana J. and Edward J. Williams Collection of “negrobilia.”
“These two rooms are almost like bookends of the American imagination—one imagination working to subjugate people through the creation of really negative images and another trying to uplift people through the creation of edifying images of the Black experience,” he says. “I hope one day these objects disintegrate, both physically and emotionally, that instead we have this truth of equity, this truth of dignity.”
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