Co-presented by Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and R & Company, Pigeon Crib: Houston Edition is the first solo exhibition of work by celebrated ceramic artist Roberto Lugo in Texas.
Lugo is known for infusing traditional ceramics with a 21st-century street sensibility. His defiant, genre-mixing practice confronts the colonial legacy embedded in the history of ceramics, while affirming clay’s universal resonance across cultures and centuries. Lugo’s amphora forms inspired by Classical antiquity feature contemporary cultural icons such as Selena, Dennis Rodman, and Tupac Shakur, among others. Elsewhere, dragons and ornate surface motifs from Chinese imperial porcelain fuse with Hip Hop emblems like Nike Air Force 1 sneakers and pitbull-shaped umbrella stands, remixing decorative traditions with autobiographical and pop cultural references.
HCCC Curator + Exhibitions Director Sarah Darro notes, “It feels particularly apt to cite Pigeon Crib in Houston—the city where chopped and screwed remixes were born—because Roberto Lugo’s work similarly metabolizes and samples visual culture. He inflects historical ceramic forms with autobiography, Taino symbolism, graffiti, and ‘90s hip hop.”
At the heart of the exhibition is the artist’s interpretation of the famed 19th-century Peacock Room, a gilded porzellanzimmer (porcelain room) that was designed to house the prized ceramic collection of British shipping magnate, Frederick Richards Leyland. The room was painted with an eponymous avian motif by James McNeill Whistler and became globally known as a symbolic critique of wealth and power in arts patronage. Lugo’s homage to the iconic space includes a handmade mantle, lined with mosaic tile accents and framed by a shelving system holding an array of the artist’s ceramic vessels and decorative objects. The installation reflects the artist’s longstanding interest in approaches to connoisseurship and the ways in which collections illuminate the forces and motivations that shape artistic production.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Lugo will deliver the 2025 Booker-Lowe Lecture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Glassell School of Art on September 20, 2025. This highly anticipated talk offers a rare opportunity for the public to hear directly from the artist about the influences that shape his radical approach to ceramics. An artist and poet, Lugo brings a deeply personal and politically engaged perspective to this distinguished annual lecture series.
A curated retail installation of limited-edition works by Lugo will be on view and available for purchase at HCCC’s Asher: Off the Wall during the run of Pigeon Crib. These artist-made pieces offer an accessible extension of the exhibition and reinforce Lugo’s commitment to creating work that lives expansively beyond the gallery space.
About Roberto Lugo
Roberto Lugo is a Philadelphia-based artist, ceramicist, social activist, poet, and educator. Lugo utilizes classical pottery forms in conjunction with portraiture and surface design reminiscent of his North Philadelphia upbringing and Hip Hop culture to highlight themes of poverty, inequality, and racial injustice. Lugo’s works utilize traditional European and Asian ceramic techniques reimagined with a 21st-century street sensibility. Their hand-painted surfaces feature classic decorative patterns and motifs combined with elements of modern urban graffiti and portraits of individuals whose faces are historically absent on this type of luxury item–people like Sojourner Truth, Dr. Cornel West, and The Notorious BIG, as well as Lugo’s family members and, very often, himself.
Lugo holds a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Penn State. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, among others. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2023 Heinz Award, a Philadelphia’s Cultural Treasures award, a 2019 Pew Fellowship, a Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize, and a U.S. Artist Award. His work is found in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The High Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Brooklyn Museum, the Walters Art Museum, and more.
About R & Company
For over 20 years, R & Company has championed collectible design, advancing the contemporary marketplace and actively growing a global collector base and clientele. Its founders, Zesty Meyers and Evan Snyderman, are widely recognized for identifying rising talent, deepening scholarship about collectible design, and developing new avenues for growth in the industry. R & Company maintains two dynamic spaces in New York: its expansive, inaugural space at 82 Franklin Street features a rotating display of interior environments highlighting gallery designers, while 64 White Street offers an active roster of solo and group exhibitions and includes a Library and Archive of more than 4,000 books, journals, and other materials. The gallery is committed to nurturing and sustaining the markets and careers of both emerging and established designers, as well as to maintaining and expanding commercial and academic interest in historic design. Its roster of international designers includes Wendell Castle, Rogan Gregory, the Estate of Greta Grossman, Serban Ionescu, Hun-Chung Lee, Joyce Lin, Roberto Lugo, Jolie Ngo, Katie Stout, Johnny Swing, Studio Job, Joaquim Tenreiro, and Jeff Zimmerman, among many others. With its vision, passion, and expertise, R & Company serves as a critical platform for experiencing 20th- and 21st-century objects and discovering innovative, rare, and significant design.
Above: “Roberto Lugo: The Gilded Ghetto.” Photo by Joe Kramm, courtesy R & Company.
