The Big Show 2025 Opening Reception

The Big Show 2025 Opening Reception

Juried by Dr. Phillip A. Townsend
Friday, June 6, 2025, from 7 – 9 PM

Join this year’s participating artists and juror Dr. Phillip A. Townsend for a celebration of The Big Show, an ambitious annual exhibition of new work by artists practicing within a 100-mile radius of Lawndale.

Dr. Phillip Townsend is the Curator of Art at the Art Galleries at Black Studies (AGBS) at The University of Texas at Austin. A graduate of UT’s doctoral program in Art History, he specializes in modern and contemporary art, with a focus on BIPOC artists and identity politics. Before joining AGBS, he co-founded the Austin-based Neon Queen Collective. Townsend has curated retrospectives on artists such as Melvin Edwards, Alicia Henry, and Nicole Awai, as well as multi-institutional exhibitions on María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Charles White. His scholarly work appears in peer-reviewed journals and exhibition catalogs, including CAA, UT Press, and Getty Publications. Notable curatorial projects include Wura-Natasha Ogunji: earth, body, spirit (2022) and Melvin Edwards: WIRE(D) + CHAIN(ED) (2022), highlighting African diaspora artists. Exhibitions like Michael A. Booker: Wave Patterns (2024), Alicia Henry: (un)knowing (2024), Rashaun Rucker: Patron Saints of a Black Boy (2024), and Jacob Guzman: The World We Live In (2024) reflect his dedication to amplifying diverse artistic voices and fostering dialogue around identity and expression. His recent exhibition, Transcendence: A Century of Black Queer Ecstasy, 1924–2024, examines Black queer ecstasy over the past 100 years, addressing its absence in historical records and honoring the resilience, beauty, and transformative power of the Black queer community. Dr. Townsend is a lecturer in the African and African Diaspora Studies Department at UT, where he teaches a course on ethics in the contemporary art museum.