A former bank on Chicago’s South Side will house Frankie Knuckles’ vinyl archive when it reopens as a center for African-American culture.

Stony Island Bank Arts Bank, which opens to the public on October 3, will host site-specific art installations, performances, artist residencies, and several archives – including the godfather of house’s record collection.

The archives also include the libraries of the Johnson Publishing Archive, featuring magazines like Jet and Ebony, and Edward J. and Ana J. Williams’ collection of “negrobilia”, Gates’ term for the racist objects the couple collected in order to take them off the market.

The bank had lain derelict since 1978 and was bought by Gates for just $1 in 2012.

“This is a new kind of cultural amenity, a new kind of institution — a hybrid gallery, media archive and library, and community center,” said Gates said in a statement. “It is an institution of and for the South Side — a repository for African American culture and history, a laboratory for the next generation of black artists and culture-interested people; a platform to showcase future leaders—be they painters, educators, scholars, or curators.”

A tribute mural to the DJ and producer, who died in 2014, was recently removed from a wall in Chicago’s Logan Square. [via Electronic Beats; Art News]
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