“It’s not really about the material,” says Theaster Gates, “it’s about our ability to shape things.” Gates isn’t just referring to his work in sculpture, installation, and performance. He’s talking about his archives, which include a staggering 15,000 books, 60,000 architectural slides, and 4,000 ceramics. All have served his practice of “resurrection,” which conserves deaccessioned or discarded collections of African American material culture, and then reanimates them as art. For the first “resurrection” outside of Chicago, Gates’s native city, four rooms are arranged by theme—monumental nods to the history encapsulated in that thing called a “collection.” —E.C.