RICK LOWE

Rick Lowe is an artist based in Houston, Texas, with formal training in the visual arts. Over the past twenty years, he has worked both within and outside traditional art institutions, participating in exhibitions and developing community-based art projects.

Rick has exhibited his work nationally and internationally. Since 1993, his exhibitions have included the Phoenix Art Museum; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York; Gwangju Biennale in Gwangju, Korea; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Glassell School of Art, Houston; Kumamoto State Museum in Kumamoto, Japan; Zora Neale Hurston Museum in Eatonville, Florida; Venice Architecture Biennale; Anyang Public Art Program in 2010; Cittadellarte in Biella, Italy; Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas; and Documenta 14 in Kassel, Germany, and Athens, Greece.

In 1993, Rick founded Project Row Houses, an arts and cultural community located in a historically significant and culturally rich neighborhood in Houston, Texas.

He has also served as a guest artist on numerous community projects across the country. In 1996, he developed the Watts House Project in Los Angeles. From 2001 to 2002, he collaborated with arts consultant Jessica Cusick on the arts plan for the Rem Koolhaas-designed Seattle Public Library. He worked with California-based artist Suzanne Lacy and curator Mary Jane Jacobs on the Borough Project for the 2003 Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, and served as lead artist for the Delray Beach Cultural Loop in Delray Beach, Florida. In 2005, he collaborated with British architect David Adjaye on a project for the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park. In 2006, he spearheaded Transforma Projects in New Orleans, a collaborative initiative to engage artists and creativity in the city’s post-Katrina recovery. From 2008 to 2009, he worked with Wendy Ewald and students at Amherst College to develop the Exchange/Value project. In 2010, he created Small Business/Big Change for the Anyang Public Art Program in Korea. In 2013, he developed Trans.lation: Vickery Meadow for the Nasher Sculpture Center.

Rick has received numerous honors and awards. In 1997, he and Project Row Houses received a Silver Medal from the Rudy Bruner Awards for Urban Excellence. In 1998, he was on the faculty of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. He received the American Institute of Architects' Keystone Award in 2000 and the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities from Teresa Heinz in 2002. From 2001 to 2002, he was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University. He received the 2005 Skowhegan Governors Award and served as an Osher Fellow at the Exploratorium in San Francisco from 2005 to 2006. He was awarded the Brandywine Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006 and named an Innovator Fellow with the Japan Society in 2007. In 2009, he received the Skandalaris Award for Art and Architecture and a U.S. Artists Booth Fellowship. In 2010, he was honored with the Creative Time Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change. In 2011, he served as the visual arts Master Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.

In 2013, President Barack Obama appointed Rick to the National Council on the Arts. In 2014, he was named a MacArthur Fellow and a Mel King Fellow at MIT. In 2015, he served as the Breeden Scholar at Auburn University and received the University of Houston’s President’s Medallion Award, along with honorary doctorates from the Maryland Institute College of Art and Otis College of Art and Design. In 2016, he served as Distinguished Visitor at Stanford University's Haas Center and joined the University of Houston as an Associate Professor of Art.

Rick has also been an active member of the Houston community, serving with the SHAPE Community Center, the Municipal Arts Commission, and as a board member of the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau. He currently serves on the board of the Menil Foundation and has also served on the boards of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and numerous other organizations.