Sarah Lewis

Sarah Lewis is an art and cultural historian.

She is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities and Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

Lewis is the founder of Vision & Justice, a catalytic civic initiative that generates original research and programs that reveal the foundational role of art and culture for equity and justice in America. The initiative now includes the Harvard course, the landmark Vision & Justice Convening, and the Vision & Justice Book Series, launched in partnership with Aperture.

Lewis’s award-winning books and edited volumes include The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America, the acclaimed bestseller The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery, translated into seven languages, an anthology on the work of Carrie Mae Weems, and the “Vision & Justice” special issue of Aperture magazine. Her forthcoming book, Vision & Justice, will be published with One World/Random House. She has had op-eds, commentary, and profiles of her work published in outlets including The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, and Aperture.

Lewis focuses on a central question: what is the role of art for justice in American society? She pioneered the course Vision and Justice: The Art of Race and American Citizenship, part of the university’s core curriculum, alongside teaching other courses on the intersection of art, visual culture, and democracy. She also teaches a condensed version of this course at public libraries.

She is the recipient of an Honorary Degree from Pratt Institute, where she was the commencement speaker, the Infinity Award, the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, a Cullman Fellowship (NYPL), the Freedom Scholar Award (ASALH), the Arthur Danto/ASA Prize (APA), and the Photography Network Book Prize.

She has received grants ranging from the Ford Foundation to the Whiting Foundation, and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

An in-demand public speaker, Lewis’s mainstage TED talk received more than 3 million views. She has been invited to speak at the UN General Assembly to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and has given keynote addresses from the World Business Forum to the CIA to the Urban League, among many other universities, organizations, and conferences around the country.

Lewis currently serves on the boards of Thames & Hudson Inc., Creative Time, and Civil War History journal. Her past board service includes Harvard Design Press, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Brearley School, The CUNY Graduate Center, and the Yale University Honorary Degrees Committee