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Scholar Lectures

The Democratic Lens: Photography and Civic Engagement discussion series examines how images have shaped America’s collective memory and inspired individuals to participate in civic life. Photography is a powerful communication tool, and photos and image distribution platforms have evolved to become accessible tools for everyday people to share and influence ideas about the nation’s past, present, and future.

APRIL 25, 2024 | 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM MT – Updated

Photo of SARAH ELIZABETH LEWIS

SARAH ELIZABETH LEWIS

PH.D. • JOHN L. LOEB ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF THE HUMANITIES & ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF AFRICAN & AMERICAN STUDIES, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

APRIL 25, 2024 | 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM MT – Updated

How We Teach the Truth: Vision & Justice


A discussion of images, truth, representation, and justice. Lewis will discuss her initiative, Vision & Justice, and speak to the impact of images in the public realm and their capacity to shape the interwoven fabric of individual identity, community collaboration, and democratic participation, revealing the foundational role visual culture plays in generating equity and justice.

Sarah Elizabeth Lewis is an art and cultural historian. She is the Endowed John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities & Associate Professor of African & African American Studies at Harvard University and the founder of Vision & Justice. Lewis also serves on the Standing Committee on American Studies and the Standing Committee on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the intersection of visual representation, racial justice, and democracy in the United States from the nineteenth century through the present. 

NOVEMBER 19, 2023 | 10:30AM-1:30PM MT

Photo of LEIGH RAIFORD

LEIGH RAIFORD

PH.D. • PROFESSOR OF AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

NOVEMBER 19, 2023 | 10:30AM-1:30PM MT

“Deep Into What I'm Seeing": Photography and the Making and Unmaking of Black Citizenship

A look at how photographs in a variety of forms and genres—including surveillance images, documentary photography, personal images, and public art—influences ideas of Black citizenship.

Leigh Raiford, Ph.D, is a Professor of African American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, where she teaches, researches, writes, and curates about race, gender, justice, and visuality. She is the inaugural director of the Black Studies Collaboratory, a three-year project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. 

NOVEMBER 19, 2023 | 10:30AM-1:30PM MT

Photo of MAKEDA BEST

MAKEDA BEST

Ph.D. • DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF CURATORIAL AFFAIRS, OAKLAND MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIA

NOVEMBER 19, 2023 | 10:30AM-1:30PM MT

Photography, Ecology, Democracy

This talk considers the intertwined dialogues between and the impact of Civil Rights photography on American environmental photography of the late twentieth century.


Makeda Best, Ph.D., is currently the Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA). Best comes to OMCA after serving at Harvard University Art Museums as Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography since 2017, and previously as Assistant Professor of Visual Studies at California College of the Arts. Beyond photography, Best conceived of the Museums’ curatorial ReFrame initiative, which aims to critically examine the museum and its collections.

NOVEMBER 16, 2023 | 6:00PM-7:00PM MT

Photo of LUCY R. LIPPARD

LUCY R. LIPPARD

WRITER, ACTIVIST, & CURATOR

NOVEMBER 16, 2023 | 6:00PM-7:00PM MT

Imaging as Activism

Considering photography's multiple roles in virtually all social justice movements, from the civil rights movement to protests against the Vietnam War to feminism to the Central American wars to Black Lives Matter to the climate crisis and more recent feminist actions.

Lucy R. Lippard is a writer, activist, sometime curator, and author of 25 books on contemporary art and cultural criticism. She has co-founded various artists’ feminist and activist organizations and publications. She lives off the grid in rural Galisteo, New Mexico, where for 23 years, she has edited the monthly community newsletter: El Puente de Galisteo.

APRIL 18, 2023 | 1:30-2:30pm MT

Photo of KYMBERLY PINDER

KYMBERLY PINDER

PH.D. • SCHOLAR, CURATOR, & STAVROS NIARCHOS FOUNDATION DEAN, YALE SCHOOL OF ART, YALE UNIVERSITY

APRIL 18, 2023 | 1:30-2:30pm MT

What Can’t Be Unseen: Photography & Activism

Published photos have made a significant impact on the public and lawmakers regarding Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, anti-war efforts, LGBTQ, and Immigrant Rights. This talk surveys the role of some iconic photographs in our country's most transformative political movements for racial, gender, and class equality.

Kymberly Pinder, Ph.D., is a Scholar, Curator and is currently the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean at the Yale School of Art, Yale University. She was a professor and administrator for sixteen years at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before coming to New Mexico where she was dean of the College of Fine Arts at UNM from 2012 until 2019.

NOVEMBER 20, 2022 | 11am-12pm MT

Photo of Anne Wilkes Tucker

Anne Wilkes Tucker

Curator Emerita of Photography, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Image © Greenfield Sanders

NOVEMBER 20, 2022 | 11am-12pm MT

WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Empathy As A Perspective

As the war grinds on in Ukraine, what can we learn from conflict photographs made almost two centuries ago? How do James Nachtwey’s recent photographs of Ukrainian battle sites connect with those by Matthew Brady or W. Eugene Smith? Because wars are ever-changing and ever-constant. This lecture will discuss the recurring patterns that are the points of departure for recent searing photographs.

Anne Wilkes Tucker was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she attended public schools. She received undergraduate degrees from Randolph Macon Woman's College and Rochester Institute of Technology and a graduate degree from the Visual Studies Workshop, a division of the State University of New York, which sponsored classes, first at the George Eastman House and then at the V.S.W, studying with Beaumont Newhall and Nathan Lyons.

NOVEMBER 20, 2022 | 10-11am MT

Photo of Laura Wexler

Laura Wexler

Charles H. Farnam Professor of American Studies & Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, Yale University

Image © Tanya Marcuse

NOVEMBER 20, 2022 | 10-11am MT

Photography & Restitution: The Civil Potential of the Image

From its inception in the decades before the Civil War, photography has helped Americans not only to see their families anew, but to imagine newly the communities to which those families belonged. Some have been enhanced; others were dispossessed. This talk will present an array of past and present struggles over the social image unleashed by the photographic age.

Laura Wexler is the Charles H. Farnam Professor of American Studies, and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Yale University, and Acting Co-Chair of the Public Humanities Program at Yale, where she studies the photographic reproduction of race, gender, sexuality, class, and region from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.

Scholar Lecture Recordings

NOVEMBER 19, 2023

Photography, Ecology, Democracy with Dr. Makeda Best, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs, Oakland Museum of California
“Deep Into What I’m Seeing”: Photography and the Making and Unmaking of Black Citizenship with Dr. Leigh Raiford, Professor of African American Studies, University of California, Berkeley

APRIL 18, 2023

What Can’t Be Unseen: Photography and Activism with Dr. Kymberly Pinder, Dean, Yale School of Art, Yale University

NOVEMBER 20, 2022

Photography & Restitution: The Civil Potential of the Image with Laura Wexler, Professor of American, Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, Yale University
WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Empathy as A Perspective with Anne Wilkes Tucker, Curator Emerita of Photography, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston