Black Wall Street Journey: In Conversation with Rick Lowe
Part of UMMA’s Re-opening Celebration Weekend!
Join us for a discussion with artist Rick Lowe on the occasion of the opening of his largest solo museum exhibition in the United States—Black Wall Street Journey: Re and De Imagining Black Progress. Inspired by the rebuilding of Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood following the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, Lowe started Black Wall Street Journey in 2018 and has since produced numerous public art presentations, installations, research, and other projects. At UMMA, Re and De Imagining Black Progress includes new paintings, sculpture, and public installations that turn eight years of research into bold visual form that together examine how Black prosperity, resilience, and self-determination are represented, measured, and understood.
A significant amount of Lowe’s research took place during his three-year residency at U-M’s Institute for Social Research (ISR) and included deep engagement with researchers, data scientists and dozens of students. To mark the opening, Lowe will be joined by key collaborators Director of ISR Kathleen Cagney, U-M Political Science Professor Christian Davenport, and exhibition curator Abigail Winograd. Together they will reflect on the research that informed the exhibition and this innovative collaboration where social science and artistic vision & practice come together.
Free and open to the public. No registration required.
About the Speakers
Rick Lowe
Rick Lowe is an American artist who pairs paintings, drawings, and installations with collaborative, community-based projects developed with individuals and communities 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. 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. 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.
Kathleen A. Cagney
Kathleen A. Cagney is Director of the Institute for Social Research (ISR) and Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan. Her research examines social inequality and its relationship to health with a focus on neighborhood, race, and aging and the life course. Her general aim is to bring insights from urban sociological theory and novel survey and measurement methods to research on health and well-being. As Director of ISR, she has focused on the integration of social science and the arts, the development of research on rural life, and the creation of programmatic efforts to expand access to the academy through a post-baccalaureate program in the social sciences.
Christian Davenport (aka "Science" or "Bittah Ninja")
Christian Davenport (aka “Science” or “Bittah Ninja”) is the Charles Tilly Distinguished University Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. Primary research interests include political conflict/contention (i.e., genocide, human rights violation, protest, everyday resistance, anti-black coercive behavior), conceptualization/measurement and popular culture. He is the creator of academic books, non-academic books and peer-reviewed articles but also board games, comics, computer programs and various pieces of art.
Abigail Winograd
Abigail Winograd is an independent curator who was recently the Commissioner and Curator of the US pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale (Jeffrey Gibson’s the space in which to place me). She is the co-director and chief curator of Pueblo Unido Gallery in Chicago, IL. Winograd received a doctorate in art history from the University of Texas at Austin and has additional degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
SUPPORT
Lead support for Black Wall Street Journey is provided by U-M Institute for Social Research, U-M Office of the President, U-M Arts Initiative, Joseph and Annette Allen, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and U-M Office of the Provost. Additional generous support is provided by Michigan Ross and U-M School of Social Work.
