Plan Your Visit

• Admission is free.
• This event takes place in Favrot Auditorium on Level 1 of the Glassell School of Art. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.
• Parking Information | Museum Hours | MFAH Campus Map

About the Artists
Brian Ellison is a Houston-based conceptual artist, photographer, and cinematographer. An MFA graduate of the University of Houston, where his thesis exhibition at the Blaffer Art Museum demonstrated his power to convene, inspire, and elevate, Ellison credits art with saving his life and has spent his career using it as a catalyst for healing and community connection for others. A former educator, he serves as director of public programs at Project Row Houses in Houston's Third Ward and is the founder of the Black Man Project, a nonprofit creating safe spaces for vulnerability and healing for Black men and women through a community therapy model. 

Kalup Linzy received his MFA from the University of South Florida and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He has received numerous awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, Creative Capital Foundation grant, and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in film and video. Linzy's best-known work is a series of politically charged videos that satirize the conventions of the television soap opera. His work is in the public collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Metropolitan Museum of Art. Linzy is currently part of the Tulsa Art Fellowship Alumni-in-Residence program.

About the Moderator
Lisa Volpe is curator of photography and head of the department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Previously, she was the curator at the Wichita Art Museum, held various curatorial roles at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA), and had fellowships at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Her 2021 exhibition catalogue Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer was one of two finalists for the Association of American Publishers Prose Awards. Gordon Parks: Stokely Carmichael and Black Power, published for the 2022 exhibition, was named a “must read” by Esquire and New York magazines.