The planning committee is please to announce the keynote for the 6th Biennial Grant Wood Symposium--Rick Lowe.

Rick Lowe, originally trained as a painter, has exhibited and worked with communities in the United States and internationally. His work has appeared in Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Museum of Contemporary Arts, Los Angeles, Neuberger Museum, Purchase, New York, Phoenix Art Museum, Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, the Kumamoto State Museum, and the Venice Architecture Biennale. However, he has received most recognition for his Project Row Houses (PRH), which he founded two decades ago in Houston. In PRH, he has created a blueprint for using urban renewal practices within an artistic context to enrich lives. This shift was in response to the pressing social, economic, and cultural needs of his community. The goal of the PRH is be a community platform that enriches lives through art with an emphasis on cultural identity and its impact on the urban landscape. They engage neighbors, artists, and enterprises in collective creative action to help materialize sustainable opportunities in marginalized communities. Within this unconventional but exemplary approach to community revitalization, he has transformed a long-neglected neighborhood in Houston into a visionary public art project PRH, that continues to evolve. Lowe has initiated arts-driven redevelopment projects in other cities, including the Watts House Project in Los Angeles, the Borough Project in Charleston, with Suzanne Lacy and Mary Jane Jacobs, the Delray Beach Cultural Loop in Florida, and the Anyang Public Art Program 2010 in Anyang.

President Barack Obama appointed Rick to the National Council on the Arts in 2013 and in 2014 he was named a MacArthur Fellow. Lowe lives and works in Houston.