Theaster Gates is an artist, musician, and "cultural planner." His performances, installations, and urban interventions have included assembling gospel choirs, forming temporary unions, and using systems of mass production as a way of underscoring industry’s need for the body. He is committed to the restoration of poor black neighborhoods by converting abandoned buildings into cultural spaces that not only allow new cultural moments to happen in unexpected places, but also raise expectations about where "place-making" happens and why.

Currently a Loeb Fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gates has received awards from the Joyce Foundation and the Graham Foundation. In 2010 he performed and exhibited at the Whitney Biennial and the Armory Show in New York, the Milwaukee Art Museum, Bruno David Gallery and the Pulitzer Museum of Art in Saint Louis, and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

The Design and Craft Lecture Series is funded by the Wornick Endowment Fund.

Generous support for CCA public programs in San Francisco has been provided by Grants for the Arts / San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund.