The Rebuild Foundation, the non-profit led by the artist, professor and urban planner Theaster Gates, will launch its newest initiative in Chicago this month. The Land School, described as a “radical model of land stewardship”, is situated inside the former St Laurence Catholic Elementary School in the Hyde Park neighbourhood on Chicago’s South Side.
Gates, who was the recipient of a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2018 Nasher Prize, purchased the building in 2014 for $500,000. Planning for the the abandoned school building’s transformation into an arts incubator began in 2016. The 40,000 sq. ft building has undergone a $12m rehabilitation, which preserved its historical masonry, plasterwork and brick details. In 2023, the project was awarded a $2.5m grant from Chicago City Council’s Neighbourhood Opportunity Fund.
The Land School will open on 14 September, offering process-driven, artist-led programming. The building will include artists’ studios, an archival research lab, co-working areas, display areas for the Rebuild Foundation’s collection of historical artefacts and spaces for arts entrepreneurship education classes.
“The Land School marks a radical milestone in our work, one where—as a small, experimental arts organisation invested in space redemption—we now own our tools and our facility,” Gates said in a statement. “As we consecrate the building and celebrate our archives in this first phase of opening, we are excited for the space to continue to reveal itself to us over the years.”
Gates added that the Land School’s opening will “unfold in phases”. The inaugural programming will include its first creative partners-in-residence, the Chicago-based Black chamber music collective D-Composed, the new music recording label International Anthem and the DJ and music historian Duane Powell. A day-long celebration on 14 September will include public events in the Rebuild Foundation’s nearby park, Kenwood Gardens, complete with honey extraction and yoga demonstrations.
The Land School’s opening will mark the 15th anniversary of the Rebuild Foundation, a platform for art and cultural development in Chicago that operates a number of sites on the city’s historically Black and systematically marginalised South Side. The foundation’s holdings include the Stony Island Arts Bank—which contains the book collection of the founder of Jet and Ebony magazines—the Dorchester Art and Housing Collaborative, Archive House and the Listening House. The Archive House holds around 14,000 architecture books sourced from a foreclosed bookstore. The Listening House holds around 8,000 records purchased from the closing sale of Dr Wax Records, a mainstay in the Chicago music scene.
