Mel Chin and Rick Lowe

Mel Chin and Rick Lowe explore the complexities of building healthy communities through art and activism.

Projects by Mel Chin and Rick Lowe reveal the contributions artists can make to urban revitalization. The artists work with MIT students in the department of Urban Studies and Planning, the Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) and the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) on a project that demonstrates the importance of cross-disciplinary intervention into planning and development practice. Students are given a rare opportunity to participate in art-making with these renowned artists in an experimental setting.

Both artists are expert conveners and thinkers in this realm. Mel Chin’s recent work, Fundred Dollar Bill Project, is a nationwide initiative to support the recovery of lead-contaminated soil in post-Katrina New Orleans. Rick Lowe’s Project Row Houses in Houston, Texas, has been an outstanding and evolving model of community revitalization through public artwork since 1993.

Houston Chronicle: Chin’s encyclopedic approach yields collages full of memories
CNN: Kids draw on imagination in bid to clean up lead-tainted dirt
al.com: Lowe’s ‘Memory Project’ characterized by diversity, compelling artwork

Mel Chin is an artist from Houston, Texas, known for his wide range of artwork including projects that require multi-disciplinary, collaborative teamwork and projects that join cross-cultural aesthetics with complex ideas. Learn more about Mel Chin.

Rick Lowe is the founder of Project Row Houses, an arts and cultural community located in a historically significant and culturally charged neighborhood of Houston, Texas. Learn more about Rick Lowe.

Join Us At This Public Event

Mel Chin and Rick Lowe: Artists and Community Planning, September 24, 2012

Mel Chin and Rick Lowe: Artists and Community Planning

MIT Visiting Artists Mel Chin and Rick Lowe present individual projects that engage art in planning diverse and lively urban environments. Active in their own communities and in national initiatives, each deploys art to reinvent locations in need of revitalization. Moderated by Dayna Cunningham, Executive Director of the Community Innovators Lab, a center of planning and development within the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, the discussion examines the potential contributions of artists to an urban studies and planning curriculum.

Mel Chin’s and Rick Lowe’s residencies are made possible by the Arts at MIT Visiting Artists Program, and are co-presented by CoLab and the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology. The arts at MIT are rooted in experimentation, risk-taking and imaginative problem-solving.