The 2025-26 Visiting Artist Lecture Series is presented by the Department of Art at Rice University, with series support from the Department of Art History and the MFAH Glassell School of Art Core Program, with lecture support from the Rice School of Architecture, the Department of English and Creative Writing, and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.

Laura Owens
Thursday, January 15
6:00 PM Reception
6:30 PM Lecture
Pitman Cinema Theatre, Sarofim Hall
Event link
Artist website

The artist’s visit is in collaboration with the MFAH Glassell School of Art Core Program and the Department of English and Creative Writing at Rice.


Laura Owens (b. 1970, Euclid, Ohio) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. One of the most celebrated painters of her generation, Owens has continually pushed the boundaries of what painting is, or can be. From the outset, her works were marked by an irreverent embrace of multifarious sources and references – embroidery, textiles, texts, and decorative patterns. Ranging in scale and technique, her works have continued to veer between, and fuse, the languages of abstraction, decoration and figuration.


Owens has exhibited extensively, including a mid-career survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017), which traveled to the Dallas Museum of Art and Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (both in 2018). Owens most recently presented a solo exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York (2025), where her work continues to explore and expand on site-specific immersive painting installations. Further solo exhibitions include the Cleveland Museum of Art (2021), Fondation Vincent van Gogh in Arles, France (2021), CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco (2016), Secession in Vienna (2015), and Kunstmuseum Bonn (2011) among others. Owens studied at California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME (both in 1994), and Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI (1992).
 

Visiting Artist lecture Series poster promoting Laura Owens public lecture

 

 

The 2025-26 Visiting Artist Lecture Series is presented by the Department of Art at Rice University, with series support from the Department of Art History and the MFAH Glassell School of Art Core Program, with lecture support from the Rice School of Architecture, the Department of English and Creative Writing, and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.


All lectures are free and open to the public. 
Discounted parking available at West Lot 4, Rice University.
Flat rate of $6, credit card required.