About

Sarah Lewis is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities and Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She is the founder of Vision & Justice, a leading publishing and research initiative that serves as a key organizer, partner, and resource for artists, scholars, and leaders seeking to examine the foundational role of visual culture in America’s representational democracy. Lewis is also known for her landmark work on creativity and the gift of failure for innovation.

She has authored and edited over 60 publications including The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America (Harvard University Press, 2024), the bestseller, The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery (Simon & Schuster, 2014), the award-winning volumes, Carrie Mae Weems (MIT Press, 2021), and “Vision & Justice” (Aperture, 2016), taught widely in universities in the United States and abroad and made required reading for incoming first-year students at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. 

A frequent speaker at universities and conferences, her mainstage TED talk, Embrace the Near Win, has received 2.9 million views. She has delivered keynotes, talks and commencement addresses for many universities and organizations. As founder of Vision & Justice, Lewis has organized landmark convenings and founded a Vision & Justice Book Series, launched in partnership with Aperture. Her writing has been published in the New Yorker, The New York Times, Artforum, and the New York Review of Books, and her work has been the subject of profiles from Vogue toThe Boston Globe toThe New York Times. 

Lewis’s awards and recognition include the Walter Channing Cabot Fellowship at Harvard University (2025), the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship (2022), the Arthur Danto/ASA Prize from the American Philosophical Association (2022), the Freedom Scholar Award from the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (2019), the Infinity Award for Critical Writing and Research from the International Center of Photography (2017). She has received an honorary degree from Pratt Institute (2024) and was also asked to deliver the commencement address for Pratt Institute that year at Radio City Music Hall, following other commencement addresses for Capella University (2021), and Yale University School of Art (2019). 

Before joining the faculty at Harvard, Lewis held curatorial positions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Tate Modern, London. She also served as a Critic at Yale University School of Art. Lewis currently serves on the boards of Thames & Hudson Inc., Creative Time, and Civil War History journal and served on the Yale Corporation Committee on Honorary Degrees. Her research 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.

Lewis received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, an M. Phil from Oxford University, an M.A. from Courtauld Institute of Art, and her Ph.D. from Yale University. She lives in Cambridge, MA.