The Big Show 2026 Opening Reception

The Big Show 2026 Opening Reception

Juried by Valerie Cassel Oliver
Friday, June 12, 2026, from 7 – 9 PM

Join this year’s participating artists and juror Valerie Cassel Oliver for a celebration of The Big Show, an ambitious annual exhibition of new work by artists practicing within a 100-mile radius of Lawndale. More information on sponsorships & supporting The Big Show – click here.

Valerie Cassel Oliver is the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Prior to her position at the VMFA, she was Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston where she began in 2000. At the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Cassel Oliver organized numerous exhibitions including the acclaimed Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970 (2005); Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art (2012) and major survey exhibitions for Donald Moffett; Benjamin Patterson, Jennie C. Jones, Angel Otero and Annabeth Rosen.

Her debut at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts was the critically acclaimed retrospective entitled, Howardena Pindell: What Remains to be Seen coorganized with Naomi Beckwith (2018). In 2021, she opened the groundbreaking exhibition, The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture and the Sonic Impulse that toured nationally. And in 2023, she organized the exhibition, Dawoud Bey: Elegy that looks at the artist’s preoccupation with histories of place. The work included commissioned photographs of Richmond’s Historic Slave Trail exhibited with previous bodies of work created in Louisiana and Ohio. The exhibition toured to the New Orleans Museum of Art where it closed January, 2026. Cassel Oliver has also organized the exhibitions, “Ted Joans: Drawings from Africa” (2024) that featured the complete portfolio of Joans’ drawings from 1956 (2023); Theaster Gates: Wonder Working Power (2024) and Robert Rauschenberg: Cardbirds (2025), a centennial project that will also feature a commissioned performance work by Ellen Fullman.

Cassel Oliver is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards including fellowships from the Getty Research Institute (2007) and the Center of Curatorial Leadership (2009); the High Museum of Art’s David C. Driskell Award (2011); the James A. Porter Book Award from Howard University (2018) as well as the Alain Locke International Arts Award, Detroit Institute of Art; the College Arts Association’s Excellence in Diversity Award; the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College; and Brandywine Workshop and Archives’ Lifetime Achievement Award (all 2022). She was recently presented with an award of distinction from the American Folk Art Society (2023) for her work to bring art from the African American South into the collection of the museum. In 2022, she was also tapped to curate Spotlight, a section for the Frieze Masters Art Fair in London–a role she reprised in 2024 and in 2025 bringing a diverse range of under recognized artists and galleries into the fair’s holdings.

Cassel Oliver holds an Executive MBA from Columbia University, New York; an M.A. in Art History from Howard University in Washington, D.C. and, a B.S. in Communications from the University of Texas at Austin. Beyond her curatorial endeavors, she has previously worked in the field as a Program Officer at the National Endowment for the Arts (1988-95) and as Director of the Visiting Artists Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1995-2000).

Photo courtesy the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; credit, Troy Wilkinson.