Sarah Lewis

“The arts are not just ephemeral,” says Harvard Professor Sarah Lewis. “They carry real weight in the real world.” Professor Lewis was the Margaret A. Johnson Speaker this year. An assistant professor in Harvard’s Department of Art and Architecture and the Department of African and African American Studies, Professor Lewis works at the nexus of visual representation, racial inequity and social justice. Professor Lewis is the guest editor of the landmark “Vision & Justice” issue of Aperture, now required reading for all incoming freshman at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is author of The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery. She has been the keynote speaker at a range of events and institutions, including TED, SXSW, the Aspen Ideas Festival and the Federal Reserve Bank.

“Arts and imagery model for all of us what we can become. We can’t become what we can’t imagine.”