Theaster Gates

GRAY congratulates Theaster Gates on being named a medalist in the Established Artists category at the 2026 Art Basel Awards.

The Art Basel Awards are the first global initiative to recognize the full breadth of the contemporary art ecosystem, spanning nine categories that honor both artistic excellence and the individuals and institutions that shape and sustain it. Entering its second year, the Awards are rooted in celebration, peer recognition, and a community-led selection process. Fifteen artists are recognized in the Emerging, Established, and Icon categories, while eighteen medalists are honored across Cross-Disciplinary, Museum and Institution, Media and Storyteller, Patron, Allies, and Curator. Rather than focusing on singular achievements, the Awards identify and support practices with lasting influence - those that shape cultural narratives across borders, disciplines, and industries.

Medalists will be recognized during Art Basel in June and through year-round global campaigns and initiatives. Later this year, Gold Awardees will be selected through an independent peer-review process and announced at the Official Art Basel Awards Night during Art Basel Miami Beach.

Gates' practice engages with space theory, land development, film, performance, and sculpture to translate and preserve objects representative of oft-neglected historical moments of the Black American experience. By adapting, re-forming, and hand-crafting materials and archives, he calls into question the established hierarchies of an object’s value, exposing how materials are not just aesthetic forces, but signifiers of religious, political, and social meaning.