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Theaster Gates -
African Still Life #3: A Tribute to Patric McCoy and Marva Jolly
September 23, 2025 - July 5, 2026
Commissioned by the Smart Museum of Art for the Threshold series.
This installation builds on Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates’s ongoing investigation of accumulation, ritual, and the material afterlives of friends and loved ones. Presented as an open-storage museum cabinet, African Still Life #3: A Tribute to Patric McCoy and Marva Jolly serves as an homage to friends whose care influenced Gates early in his artistic career: Patric McCoy is a longtime collector of contemporary African-American art and African artifacts, and Marva Lee Pitchford-Jolly was a ceramic artist and influential teacher.
African Still Life #3 features two collections that have recently entered Gates’s care: the Muguette and Lucien Guenneguez Collection of African objects, and the collection of Dinh Nguyen, a French-Vietnamese DJ whose interests spanned Caribbean music, jazz, British R&B, ska, and reggae. Taken together, the installation invites reflection on cultural heritage and spiritual traditions, the French colonial imagination expressed through object-making, archiving and Black futures, and form and sound.
Programming Activation
From September 23, 2025, through February 22, 2026, 12-inch LPs from the Dinh Nguyen Collection—spanning Caribbean, jazz, African pop, Vietnamese funk, experimental sounds, and more—were channeled through a custom sound sculpture by Gates and Devon Turnbull within the Threshold installation. A team member from The Rebuild Foundation played records from the collection and was available for drop-in conversations during that time. On select days during the activations, preliminary research on objects from the Muguette and Lucien Guenneguez Collection was shared.
Threshold Series
African Still Life #3 is activated through programs that include deep listening and exercises in close looking, community archiving, and historical research. African Still Life #3: A Tribute to Patric McCoy and Marva Jolly is commissioned as part of the Smart’s ongoing Threshold series. Launched in 2010, the initiative brings large-scale installations of contemporary art annually to the Smart’s lobby. The prominent placement of these commissions ensures that all visitors—whether they have come to the building for a class, an exhibition, or a program—will be welcomed with thought-provoking new art.
SUPPORT
Major support is provided by Amy and Paul Carbone, Bob and Jane Clark, Elissa Efroymson and Adnaan Hamid, Ray Iwanowski and Erica Noble, Jennifer and Alec Litowitz, and the Donald R. Wilson, Jr. Family Foundation.
Principal support is provided by the University of Chicago Women’s Board, and Clea and Daniel Van Voorhis.
We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of GRAY.
Support is provided by the Barbara Bluhm-Kaul Foundation, Jenny Brorsen and Richard DeMartini, Valerie Carberry and Richard Wright, Gagosian, Denise and Gary Gardner, Paul and De Gray, Liz and Eric Lefkofsky, and White Cube.
Additional support is provided by the Smart Museum's Board of Governors, and SmartPartners.
Presented in the Eunice Ratner Reception Gallery.
IMAGES
Installation view, African Still Life #3: A Tribute to Patric McCoy and Marva Jolly, 2025. Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago. Photo by Sara Pooley.