The Stony Island Arts Bank, a cultural venue and community centre set up by artist Theaster Gates in Chicago, is in talks to display the Cleveland Park gazebo where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was fatally shot by police in November 2014.
“We’re still in conversation with the Tamir Rice Foundation and very excited about the prospect of having the gazebo in Chicago,” says Amy Schachman, the director of programmes and development for the Rebuild Foundation, which runs the Stony Island Arts Bank. She stresses that no deal has been finalised. “We’re working with Tamir’s mother and our partners in the city to create a series of public programmes that do justice to the issues that are raised [by the display].”
The deal to bring the gazebo to Chicago has been negotiated with the help of Black Lives Matter co-founder Opal Tometi, the actor and activist Jesse Williams and the artist Hank Willis Thomas, who says the issue of where it should be displayed raised questions about the gazebo’s place in US culture. “Is it a work of art? Is it a readymade? Is it a historical artefact?” Thomas asks.
On 10 August, Cleveland City Council passed legislation that transferred ownership of the gazebo from the city to the Tamir Rice Foundation, a non-profit run by the Rice family, which sued Cleveland for the wrongful death of their child and settled earlier this year for $6m. Whether or not the installation in Chicago will be permanent is still to be decided, says Billy Joe Mills, the co-counsel for the Rice family, adding that several other institutions have all expressed interest in hosting the gazebo on a temporary basis.
The victim’s family supported the decision to remove the gazebo and want a memorial to Rice built in its place. A spokeswoman for Cleveland City Council said that current plans include a stone and a plaque marking where the gazebo once stood.
Rice was shot by a police officer responding to a 911 caller who reported a boy pointing a gun at pedestrians at the Cudell Recreation Center, although the caller said the gun was “probably fake”.
