Rick Lowe is an artist based in Houston, Texas, with formal training in the visual arts. Over the past twenty years, he has created nationally and internationally exhibited artworks, as well as pioneering community-based art projects.

In 1993, Rick founded Project Row Houses, an arts and cultural community located in a historically significant and culturally charged neighborhood in Houston, Texas. He has spearheaded other impactful arts-based community programs like the Watts House Project in Los Angeles and the Delray Beach Cultural Loop in Florida.

Rick has exhibited widely including at the Phoenix Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and galleries across the U.S., Korea, Japan and Europe. His works have been part of major events like the Gwangju Biennale and the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Among various honors, Rick has received the American Institute of Architects Keystone Award, Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities, and MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship. He was appointed by President Obama to the National Council on the Arts. Currently, Rick serves as Associate Professor of Art at the University of Houston, while remaining deeply engaged with Houston's arts community through organizations like Project Row Houses and the Menil Foundation.

Tonika Lewis Johnson is a visionary photographer and social justice artist Tonika Lewis Johnson draws on her deep roots in Chicago’s South Side to illuminate inequity, advocate for change, and compel meaningful conversations. Her ongoing opus, Folded Map, unravels stark disparities among segregated Chicagoans. Her “Inequity For Sale” project unearths the discriminatory history of Land Sale Contracts, urging reevaluation.

Internationally acclaimed, Tonika’s artistry has earned accolades including Chicago Magazine’s Chicagoan of the Year. Her work has been showcased at venues like the Museum of Contemporary Art, Rootwork Gallery, the Cultural Center, and Loyola University Museum.

Beyond art, Tonika serves as a leader for change as a Field Foundation “Leader for a New Chicago,” a Landmark Illinois Influencer, and recent Ateliers Médicis Artist in Residence in Paris. She spearheads the Folded Map Project non-profit as Creative Executive Officer, embodying the power of art in advocacy.

Maria Krysan: Distinguished Professor of Sociology Maria Krysan has spent decades researching, teaching and writing about residential segregation and racial attitudes at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). Her award-winning 2017 book "Cycle of Segregation" proposes an innovative framework for understanding the causes of racial residential segregation. Krysan's writing has been published in academic journals as well as nonacademic outlets like Crain’s Chicago Business and Block Club Chicago. She has been interviewed or cited by outlets including WBEZ, the Chicago Tribune, CNN and the New York Times.

Krysan frequently presents her scholarly expertise outside academia, engaging with community leaders, policymakers, housing agencies, students and more to share and learn. Her engaged work especially with artist Tonika Johnson of the Folded Map Project exemplifies her commitment to academic-community collaboration.

Abigail Winograd is an independent curator. She is currently Commissioner and Curator of the US pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale as well as the co-director and chief curator of Pueblo Unido Gallery in Chicago, IL. She has held positions at the Frans Hals Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Blanton Museum of Art, and Art Institute of Chicago and has curated exhibitions around the world.  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.

Moderator: 

Kathleen Cagney, Ph.D.: Director of the Institute for Social Research and Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan. Her research examines social inequality, neighborhoods, race, and their relationship to health and aging. Cagney has conducted extensive neighborhood-based research utilizing surveys, census data, systematic observations, and sensors capturing factors like air quality. Her current NIA-funded project uses smartphones to track older adults’ “activity spaces” during the pandemic via location tracking and Ecological Momentary Assessments.

She also collaborates on the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project, identifying linkages between social/physical contexts and wellbeing. Additionally, she is developing the Great Smoky Mountains Study of Rural Aging, gathering GPS and other everyday life data on rural older adults. Cagney has an interdisciplinary background with degrees in sociology, political science, public policy and health policy/management from Western Michigan University, the University of Chicago, and Johns Hopkins University.