For our latest “site-specific” episode, we visit the artist Theaster Gates inside his personal library on the South Side of Chicago to talk about the exhibition “Unto Thee” at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art (on view through Feb. 22, 2026), his first-ever solo museum show in his home city; his forward-looking vision for the Rebuild Foundation’s recently opened arts incubator The Land School; his deep, ongoing connections to Japan and the coastal city of Tokoname; and the vast, alchemic impacts of music on his life and work.