(Online) Community: Artist Talk with Rick Lowe

Artist Rick Lowe will be joined by writer and curator Antwaun Sargent to discuss how creativity can empower people and communities to spark economic, social, and political change. Rick Lowe is celebrated for his achievements in both the arts and community revitalization. Lowe is perhaps best known for cofounding the Houston-based Project Row Houses, an arts and cultural community developed in one of the city’s oldest African American neighborhoods that provides art education programs, exhibition spaces, artist studios, gardening, mentoring, and an incubator for housing development, all while preserving the character of the area’s historic shotgun houses.

As an extension of his community projects, Lowe creates abstract works on paper and paintings inspired by dominos, a game which he enjoys and often plays to maintain relationships with residents of his social projects.

This summer, Lowe most recently launched the Greenwood Art Project, a public art initiative of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission that featured 28 artist-led projects throughout Tulsa, Oklahoma, that commemorated and engaged residents in the history of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre through art. Additionally, Lowe launched a sister project in Chicago, Black Wall Street Journey, a multifaceted installation-based project that pays tribute to the journey of building of Black wealth using public art to tell the stories from the journeys of Black communities in Chicago and beyond.

Antwaun Sargent is a writer, curator, and director at Gagosian Gallery. He is the author of The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion (Aperture 2019) and the editor of Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists (DAP 2020) and the May/June 2020 issue of Art in America magazine. His writing has appeared in the New York Times and the New Yorker and in museum and gallery publications for artists Mickalene Thomas, Arthur Jafa, Meleko Mokgosi, Nick Cave, Yinka Shonibare, and Ed Clark, among many others. Most recently, he is the curator of “Social Works,” “The New Black Vanguard,” and “Young, Gifted and Black.”

This virtual event is part of Talking to Our Time, the Hirshhorn’s online series of free artist talks featuring a diverse group of artists and collectives. View all events!