It’s probably safe to say few people—if any, at all—have made a connection between the Huguenots who were run out of France in the 1700s and the waves of African Americans who fled the cruelties of the South during the 20th century.
But drawing such unique parallels is a hallmark of artist Theaster Gates, whose work touches art, urban planning, culture, and music. For his well-received 12 Ballads for the Huguenot House, Gates and his team dismantled much of the worn interior and timbers of a building he renovated in a black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side and reinstalled them in the run-down historic 187-year-old hotel called the Huguenot House in Kassel, Germany. The project was commissioned by Kassel’s quinquennial citywide art exhibition Documenta (13) and Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in 2012.
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