The Big Show 2017

The Big Show 2017
July 7 – August 12, 2017

Opening Reception
Friday, July 7, 2017, 7- 9 PM
Awards announced at 8 PM

The Big Show is an ambitious annual exhibition of new work by artists practicing within a 100-mile radius of Lawndale. This year, Lawndale was excited to welcome Toby Kamps, former Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Menil Collection and soon-to-be Director and Chief Curator of the Blaffer Art Museum, as juror. Kamps reviewed work by 549 artists – the most artists to submit their work in the history of The Big Show – and selected nearly 200 works for the exhibition.

The Big Show 2017 award winners selected by guest juror, Toby Kamps were announced at the opening reception on July 7, 2017. Three awards of $1,000 each were given to:

Kathy Drago
Zachary Gresham
Renata Lucia

Organizing Theme
It is a truism that life moves fast and that change is a constant. In the 21 st century, rates of change in our ecological, economic, and political lives are accelerating and increasing at breakneck speed. Even consciousness itself is under constant pressure as new technologies transfer images, messages, and memes from the screen to the mind at the speed of light.

Introducing the “Rate of Change” as its organizing principle, The Big Show 2017 seeks works of art addressing change – in its myriad forms – and made within the last change-filled year.

Join The Big Show artists for short, informal presentations about their work. Presentations begin in Lawndale’s O’Quinn gallery at 6 PM each night. Seating is limited.

Thursday, July 20 / July 27 / August 3, 2017, at 6 PM.

Toby Kamps
Director and Chief Curator
Blaffer Art Museum

Toby Kamps is the Director and Chief Curator of the Blaffer Art Museum, Houston. Formerly, Kamps served as Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Menil Collection where he organized solo exhibitions of work by artists including Vanessa Beecroft, Ellsworth Kelly, Danny Lyon, Claes Oldenburg, Haim Steinbach, Luc Tuymans, H.C. Westermann, Wols (Wolfgang Schulze), William N. Copley, and Torolab, a Tijuana design collective.

He has organized numerous group exhibition and catalogue projects such as Silence, Small World: Dioramas in Contemporary Art, Space Is the Place, and, with a team, Baja to Vancouver: The West Coast and Contemporary Art. His exhibitions The Old, Weird America and From Baja to Bar Harbor, won best traveling exhibition nationally and best regional university gallery project awards from the U.S. and New England sections of the International Association of Art Critics, respectively.

In previous curatorial positions at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, the ICA at Maine College of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, he has served on leadership teams and committees, managed membership groups, and developed programs and partnerships with other organizations. A graduate of the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art and the Getty Museum Leadership Institute, he has written for exhibition catalogues, monographs, and magazines. Currently, Kamps serves as advisor to the Spotlight section of the Frieze and Frieze Masters art fairs in New York and London, respectively. Spotlight features one-person exhibitions of work by twentieth-century artists from around the world.

Major support for Lawndale Art Center programming is provided by The Brown Foundation, Inc., the City of Houston through the Houston Museum District Association, the John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation, Houston Endowment, the John P. McGovern Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and The Wortham Foundation, Inc.

Additional support for The Big Show is generously provided by Michelle Adams, Ute and Volker Eisele, Stephen Goldberg and Tim Kollatschny, Rob Greenstein, George and Mary Howe Hawkins, G.G. Hsieh, Kerry F. Inman, Ronald Jones, Cindee and Curtis Klement, Lester and Penelope Marks, Bill and Michelle Matthews, Jeryn and Walter Mayer, H. Russell Pitman, SBS Manufacturing, Inc., Bryan Scrivner, The Shawn Artis Gallery, Richard Stout, Amy M. Tanner, Venture Products Company, and Dave Wilson.