Facsimile Cabinet of Woman Origin Stories - Reflections

"Facsimile Cabinet of Women Origin Stories: Reflections" documents a monumental participatory work by Theaster Gates (b. 1973), built from nearly 3,000 framed images of women held in the archive of the Johnson Publishing Company.

Johnson Publishing was founded in Chicago in 1942 by John H. Johnson and chronicled Black American life for more than seven decades through Ebony and Jet. Gates's Cabinet recasts highlights from that archive to center the often-unsung role of women within it. The book collects essays and reflections commissioned when the Cabinet was exhibited at the Colby College Museum of Art in 2019, contributed by twelve women working across disciplines: archivists, legal scholars, anthropologists, librarians, curators, visual artists, filmmakers, writers, and art historians. Published by DelMonico Books with the Colby College Museum of Art, edited by Lareese Hall, softcover, 143 pages.

The Cabinet belongs to Gates's larger "Black Image Corporation" project and follows his 2018 exhibition "Black Madonna" at the Kunstmuseum Basel. Gates repeatedly returns to salvaged Black institutional archives, Johnson Publishing's among them, to recontextualize and make newly visible the histories they hold.