The Collection

Roberto Lugo is a ceramicist, social activist, poet, and educator whose work merges classical pottery traditions with contemporary urban culture to address issues of poverty, inequality, and racial injustice. Born in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood to working-class Puerto Rican parents, Lugo began his creative practice as a graffiti artist before discovering ceramics in his twenties. He earned his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and his MFA from Pennsylvania State University.

Lugo’s practice reimagines European and Asian ceramic forms—teapots, urns, kraters—through a 21st-century street sensibility. Onto these vessels he layers portraits of figures historically excluded from decorative arts, including Sojourner Truth, Dr. Cornel West, and The Notorious B.I.G., alongside his family members and himself. Traditional patterns and motifs are interwoven with graffiti aesthetics and hip-hop imagery, collapsing the boundaries between the so-called high and low, craft and fine art, past and present. His works are at once critiques of social injustice and celebrations of African American and Puerto Rican culture.

A self-described “ghetto potter,” Lugo expands his practice across sculpture, painting, installation, performance, and spoken-word poetry, maintaining a focus on community engagement and accessibility. He has taught at the Tyler School of Art and continues to mentor emerging artists.

Lugo has exhibited nationally and internationally, with works included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Brooklyn Museum, Walters Art Museum, and the High Museum of Art, among others. His honors include a 2023 Heinz Award, a 2019 Pew Fellowship, the Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize (2019), a US Artists Award, and Philadelphia’s Cultural Treasures Award.