Artist Talk: Rick Lowe – In Spite Of
Artist Rick Lowe will discuss his artistic practice and his last two years working with students and researchers at U-M in preparation for an upcoming exhibition at UMMA, Black Wall Street Journey, opening in August 2026.
Rick Lowe is an American artist who pairs paintings, drawings, and installations with collaborative, community-based projects developed in the tradition of Joseph Beuys’s concept of “social sculpture.”
Working closely with individuals and communities, he has identified many ways to harness creativity to address concerns around equity and justice. Beginning with his co-founding of Project Row Houses (1993–2008) in Houston’s Third Ward and continuing through other initiatives across the United States and internationally, Lowe aims to catalyze sustainable change to promote understanding, equity, and justice. For the last two years, Lowe has been working as part of the U-M Arts Initiative’s Creators on Campus program as artist in residence with the Institute for Social Research (ISR).
Free and open to the public, no registration required.
More About
Rick Lowe
Born in 1961 in Russell County, Alabama, Lowe lives and works in Houston. Since 2016, he has taught at the University of Houston’s College of the Arts as a professor of interdisciplinary practice. Among his many honors, he received the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities in 2002, was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2014, and was the Roy Lichtenstein Artist in Residence at the American Academy in Rome in 2024.
In his studio-based practice, Lowe combines painting and collage to develop works—often at an expansive scale—that take an exploratory approach to geography and abstraction. Inspired in part by patterns of domino games that he plays to engage with community members worldwide, he notes correspondences between the dense, layered arrangements of domino tiles and maps of urban districts. The vibrant paintings that emerge suggest cartographic configurations and transformations of civic structures and relationships over time.
SUPPORT
Presented in partnership with the Penny Stamps Speaker Series, the Institute for Social Research, and the Arts Initiative as part of the 2026 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Symposium.
Special thanks to the Institute for Social Research, Arts Initiative, Political Science Professor Dr. Christian Davenport, Professor of Art Nicole Marroquin, independent curator Abigail Winograd, and the dozens of students who have participated in Rick Lowe’s residency and contributed to the upcoming exhibition.