Sarah Lewis

When we view race and justice through the lens of culture, we can enlarge our notion of citizenship, of who belongs and who counts. Sarah Lewis, an intellectual star and powerful speaker, has sparked a national conversation with “Vision & Justice”—the landmark issue of Aperture dedicated to photography of the black experience that explores, with eloquent reach, “what humanity looks like.” Praising Lewis’s work, Time writes that it “comes at a time astir with thoughtful considerations about black culture and a new quest for self and identity.”

Bursting onto the scene with a popular TED talk, and her bestselling book The Rise—about human creativity—Sarah Lewis is the guest-editor of Aperture magazine’s instant classic “Vision & Justice” issue, which has received unprecedented press coverage. The New York Times has written a handful of features, including “Celebrating Black Culture with a Careful Eye” and “Understanding Race and History Through Photography.” The Los Angeles Times captured the mood around Lewis’s work best, with its feature, “We are bearing witness to a profound moment in black culture, Aperture shows.” The conversation—and momentum—around “Vision & Justice” and its related keynotes continues to grow. Lewis’s work won the prestigious Infinity Prize from the International Center of Photography, and is required reading at NYU’s Tisch School. Recently, it became one of Harvard’s core “general education” curriculum classes, with Lewis speaking to packed lecture halls about the role of art and artists to reshape our understanding of social justice, even history.

For all the accolades that “Vision and Justice” has received, Sarah Lewis is equally known for her book, The Rise, which is the biography of an idea—a big idea—that no current term yet captures. In keynotes, she discusses creative human endeavor, and how innovation, success, and new concepts are found in unlikely places. “Like Malcolm Gladwell,” Edwidge Danticat writes, “[Lewis] brilliantly takes complex ideas and makes them easy to follow, making it possible for us to see the world in a brand new way.” The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery has been hailed by a who's who of creative thinkers. Lewis Hyde (The Gift) calls it a “welcome departure from standard accounts of artistry and innovation.” Kirkus Reviews writes: "Creativity, like genius, is inexplicable, but Lewis’ synthesis of history, biography and psychological research offers a thoughtful response to the question of how new ideas happen." In talks, she masterfully teases out this thread—how new ideas happen.

Sarah Lewis is an Assistant Professor at Harvard, in the Departments of History of Art and Architecture and African and African American Studies. She has spoken on the TED main stage, at SXSW, appeared on Oprah’s “Power List,” served on President Obama’s Arts Policy Committee, and been profiled in Vogue. She has held positions at Yale’s School of Art, the Tate Modern, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Lewis’ essays have been published in Artforum and The Smithsonian, and her book on Frederick Douglass is forthcoming from Harvard University Press. She received her B.A. from Harvard, M. Phil from Oxford, and Ph.D. from Yale.