Publications
AWARD WINNING author
Sarah Lewis is a distinguished author and Harvard professor whose work explores the intersections of art, race, and democracy. Her writing has appeared in leading national publications and her scholarship has reshaped conversations on visual culture and citizenship. As a pioneer of Harvard’s Vision & Justice course, she brings critical insight to the classroom and public discourse alike. Her contributions have earned numerous fellowships, awards, and institutional recognition across the humanities and cultural scholarship.
Edited collections
Coreen Simpson: A Monograph, Sarah Lewis, Deborah Willis, and Leigh Raiford, eds., New York: Aperture, 2025.
Race Stories: Essays on the Power of Images, Sarah Lewis, Deborah Willis, and Leigh Raiford, eds., New York: Aperture and The New York Times, 2024.
Public writing
“Why Civil Rights Icon Bryan Stevenson Never Loses Hope,” Town & Country Magazine, October 29, 2024.
“How we learn to see history: A case study at the National Cathedral,” The Washington Post , January 14, 2024.
“For Black Suffragists, the Lens Was a Mighty Sword,” The New York Times, Special Issue, August 12, 2020.
“Kerry Washington Wants You to Know the Truth,” Town & Country Magazine, August 5, 2020.
“Where Are The Photos of People Dying of Covid?” The New York Times, May 1, 2020.
“The Vision and Justice Project,” in K. Drew and J. Wortham, eds., Black Futures. New York: One World, 2020.
“The Racial Bias Built into Photography,” The New York Times, April 25, 2019.
“Which is the Real Confederate Flag?” The New York Times, June 26, 2017, A16.
"Michelle Obama: Representational Justice,” in The Meaning of Michelle. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017.
“The Hidden Past of Sochi,” The New Yorker, February 19, 2014.
Peer-reviewed writing
“The Road to the White House: Race, Politics, and Groundwork,” in “Earthbound: Gravity/Figure/Ground” Special Issue, West 86th, 2026. (forthcoming)
“Style as Political Statement,” in Coreen Simpson: A Monograph, Sarah Lewis, Deborah Willis, and Leigh Raiford, eds., New York: Aperture, 2025, 223-226. (forthcoming)
“Groundwork: Race and Aesthetics in the Era of Stand Your Ground Law,” in Michael Kelly and Monique Roelofs, eds., Black Art and Aesthetics: Relationalities, Interiorities, Reckonings. London: Bloomsbury, 2023.
“The Arena of Suspension: Carrie Mae Weems, Bryan Stevenson, and the “Ground” in the Stand Your Ground Law Era,” Law & Literature, no. 34 (2022): 1-32. [online version, 2021]
“From Here We Saw What Happened: Carrie Mae Weems and the Practice of Art History,” in Sarah Lewis with Christine Garnier, eds., Carrie Mae Weems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021.
“Visual studies questionnaire: how do you engage with the visual, and what is its importance in the twenty-first century?,” Visual Studies 36 (2021): 223-225.
“The Insistent Reveal: Louis Agassiz, Joseph T. Zealy, Carrie Mae Weems, and the Politics of Undress in the Photography of Racial Science,” in Ilisa Barbash, Molly Rogers, and Deborah Willis, eds., To Make Their Way in the World: A New History of African Americans Revealed Through Nineteenth-Century Photography. Cambridge, MA: Aperture / Peabody Museum Press, 2020.
“Groundwork: Race and Aesthetics in the Era of Stand Your Ground Law,” in “Blackness” Special Issue, Art Journal 79, no. 4 (2020): 92-113.
“African American Abstraction,” in Eddie Chambers, ed., The Routledge Companion to African American Art. New York and London: Routledge, 2019.
“The Art of Negotiation,” in Dawoud Bey, ed., Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply: Photographs , 1975-2016. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018.
“Truth and Reconciliation: Bryan Stevenson and Sarah Lewis in Conversation,” in “Prison Nation,” Special Issue, Aperture 230 (2018): 21-29.
“The Future Real Conditional: Race and Monuments in the United States,” October 165 (Summer 2018): 93-99.
“Love Visual: A Conversation with Haile Gerima,” Callaloo, no. 3 (2013): 634-657.
“Unhomed Geographies: The Paintings of Julie Mehretu,” Callaloo, no. 1 (2010): 219-222.
Invited contributions
“Clearing the Ground, Claiming the Sky,” in Tyler Mitchell: Wish This Was Real, New York: Aperture, 2025.
“American Ground,” in Philip Brookman and Deborah Willis, eds., Photography and the Black Arts Movement: 1955–1985, Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2025.
“Elizabeth Prophet’s Tools of Sovereignty,” in S. Ganz Blythe, D. Molon, and A. Pickworth, eds., Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024.
“Conversation,” in Deborah Roberts: Twenty Years of Art/Work. Santa Fe, NM: Radius Books, 2023.
"Just Portraiture: A Legend at 100,” in Avedon 100. New York: Gagosian, 2023.
“Introduction: Young Gordon Parks,” in Philip Brookman, ed., Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work, 1940-1950. Göttingen: Steidl Verlag, 2018.
“Henry Taylor: The Impossible Present,” in Henry Taylor: The Only Portrait of My Momma I Ever Painted was Stolen. New York: Rizzoli, 2018.
“The Cut: The Conceptual Work of Hank Willis Thomas,” in Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal. New York: Aperture, 2018.
“Incendiary Acts,” in Lyle Ashton Harris: The Ektachrome Archive. New York: Aperture, 2017.
“Mark Bradford: The Art of Productive Dissent,” in Christopher Bedford and Katy Siegel, eds., Mark Bradford: Tomorrow is Another Day. New York: Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2017.
“Foreword,” in Carrie Mae Weems: The Kitchen Table Series. New York: Matsumoto Editions, 2016.
“Whitfield Lovell: A Reverence for Ordinary People,” in Whitfield Lovell: KIN. New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2016.
Race, Love, and Labor: New Work from the Center for Photography at Woodstock’s Artist-In-Residency Program. New York: State University of New York Press, 2014.
“Mickalene Thomas: On Beauty,” in Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe. Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2012.
“Celebration and Critique,” in Kehinde Wiley. New York: Rizzoli, 2012.
Romare Bearden: Idea to Realization. New York: D.C. Moore Gallery, 2011.
“Wangechi Mutu,” in Re: Collection: Selected Works from The Studio Museum in Harlem. New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem, 2010.
Sarah Lewis and Daniel Belasco, The Dissolve: The SITE Santa Fe Eighth International Biennial. New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2010.
“A Reverence for Ordinary People,” in Mercy, Patience and Destiny: The Women of Whitfield Lovell’s Tableaux. Atlanta: Woodruff Arts Center and The Savannah College of Art and Design, 2009.
“Freedom Beyond Fort Monroe,” in Collier Schorr, ed., Freeway Balconie. New York: Distributed Art Publishers and the Guggenheim Museum, 2008.
“Incendiary Acts,” in Cassandra Coblentz, ed., Lyle Ashton Harris: Blow Up. Scottsdale, AZ: Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and Greg Miller & Co., 2008.
“Mark Bradford: The Evidence of Things Not Seen,” in Street Level. Durham, NC: Duke University Press / The Nasher Museum at Duke University, 2007.
“American Idols,” in Deborah Willis, ed., Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraiture from 1865 to the Present. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2007.
“Boris Achour: Creationism,” in Notre Histoire: Une Scène Artistique Française Émergent. Paris: Palais du Tokyo, 2006.
“Zoe Charlton,” in Thelma Golden, ed., Frequency. New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem, 2005.
Reviews
"Tyler Mitchell’s Photography Exhibition in New York Focuses on Family,” Town & Country Magazine, October 27, 2021.
“Romare Bearden: Assembling America,” The New York Review of Books , 2020. [Book Review of Mary Schmidt Campbell’s American Odyssey: The Life and Work of Romare Bearden. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.]
“The Other Us,” Art in America, no. 5 (2016): 49-52. [Book Review of Kobena Mercer's Travel and See: Black Diaspora Art Practices Since the 1980s. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016.]
“Of Two Minds: ‘Powers of Two’ by Joshua Wolf Shenk,” The New York Times, August 22, 2014.
“Yinka Shonibare,” Artforum, no. 2 (2009): 227.
“How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness,” Nka, no. 22/23 (2008): 206-207.
“Arthur Simms at Five Myles,” Art in America, no. 2 (2006): 132.
“De(i)fying the Masters: Kehinde Wiley’s portraits meld urban street life and European high art traditions,” Art in America, no. 4 (2005): 120-125.