Awards
Lewis’s books and edited volumes include The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America, winner of the American Book Award and finalist for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award; bestseller The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery, translated into seven languages; Carrie Mae Weems and the “Vision & Justice” special issue of Aperture magazine. Her scholarship has been featured in outlets such as The New York Times, Hyperallergic, and Art in America, and has earned awards including the Arthur Danto/ASA Prize from the American Philosophical Association and the Photography Network Book Prize.
Awards and honors
Winner, American Book Award, The Unseen Truth (Harvard University Press, 2024)
Finalist, Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize, The Unseen Truth (Harvard University Press, 2024)
Winner, Harvard University, Walter Channing Cabot Fellowship
Honorable Mention, James Porter Book Award, The Unseen Truth (Harvard University Press, 2024)
Pratt Institute Commencement Address Speaker
Pratt Institute, Honorary Degree, Doctor of Humane Letters
Winner, Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, Harvard Tenure-track Nominee, Arts & Humanities Division
Winner, 2022 Arthur Danto/American Society for Aesthetics Prize, American Philosophical Association awarded for “the best paper in the field of aesthetics, broadly understood.”
Winner, Photography Network Book Prize Award for Carrie Mae Weems (MIT Press, 2021)
Capella University Commencement Address Speaker
Harvard University 19th Annual Navin Narayan Memorial Lecture Speaker
Winner, Freedom Scholar Award, Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), awarded in recognition of work that has a “direct positive impact on the life of African Americans.”
Yale School of Art, Commencement Address Speaker
Southern Utah University, Tanner Lecture in Human Values
Ann Radcliffe Trust Lecture delivered during Harvard College convocation, selected by Harvard student nomination
Phi Beta Kappa address, Harvard University chapter, Induction ceremony
Winner, Infinity Award, International Center of Photography, Critical Writing and Research for the “Vision & Justice” issue of Aperture
Yale Honorary Degrees Committee, Appointed Member
Winner, Faculty Leadership Award, Black Men’s Forum, Harvard College
Winner, Gold Rush Award, Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation
President Obama’s Arts Policy Committee, Appointed Member
Oprah’s Power List
Winner, New Leadership Award Recipient, ArtTable