Sarah Lewis

Sarah Lewis is a bestselling author and art historian. She has served on President Barack Obama's Arts Policy Committee, been selected for Oprah's “Power List," and is a faculty member at Yale University, School of Art in the MFA program. In the fall of 2014, she will be at Harvard University as a Du Bois Fellow.

Her book, The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery (2014) is a layered, story-driven investigation of how innovation, discovery, and the creative progress are all spurred on by advantages gleaned from the improbable, the unlikely, even failure. Her second book focused on on Frederick Douglass, photography, and the American Civil War, will be released by Harvard University Press in 2016.

She has held positions at both the Tate Modern and the Museum of Modern Art. Her essays on contemporary art have been published widely in magazines such as the New Yorker, Artforum and Art in America, and in publications including Rizzoli, the Smithsonian, The Museum of Modern Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

She is currently a board member of The Andy Warhol for the Visual Arts, the CUNY Graduate Center, the Harvard Alumni Association, and The Brearley School.

She received her bachelor's degree from Harvard University, an M. Phil from Oxford University, and her Ph.D. from Yale University. She lives in New York City.