From 2003-2019 Lisa held curatorial positions in non-profit and academic galleries, as well as private collections and museums, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum Library, George Mason University Art Galleries, The District of Columbia Arts Center, Transformer, Cassilhaus Gallery and Collection, The Nasher Museum of Art, The Center for Documentary Studies, and the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University’s Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Selected Curatorial Projects
Archive of Documentary Arts Collection Awards Program
2015 – 2019 | Duke University, Durham, NC
As curator of the Archive of Documentary Arts from 2014-2019 I started an initiative to diversify the collection and to reflect the multitude of viewpoints and communities from which work is being made in the documentary arts. Prior to 2014, photographs by women and artists of color made up less than 10% of the collection. To begin to address this inequity, I created and managed an open call awards program to widen the scope of work that was being considered for acquisition. Documentary photographers were invited to submit a finished portfolio of photographs to be considered for the permanent collection. Selected photographers received a $4500.00 honorarium to print a body of work which was then acquired. These portfolios are now preserved at the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, and are available for use by students, faculty, and independent researchers.
Me (Orange) by Priya Kambli, 2018 ADA Collection Award Winner
Photo-Texts: A Survey of the Rubenstein Library's Photobook Collection
July 3, 2019 – December 20, 2019 | Duke University, Durham, NC
This wide-ranging survey highlights the Rubenstein Library's collection of Photo-Texts dating from 1844-2019. A Photo-Text is a book that fully integrates and gives equal weight to photographs and text. Forty-three photobooks from forty different publishers and self-publishers are featured with an emphasis on contemporary books published since 2010. The exhibit is divided into six thematic categories of documentary practice and highlight a spectrum of approaches to writing and imagemaking.
Featured Artists: Berenice Abbott and Elizabeth McCausland • Laia Abril • Morgan Ashcom • Mathieu Asselin • Richard Avedon and James Baldwin • Barbara Bosworth and Margot Anne Kelly • Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell • Andre Bradley •Robert Burley • Teju Cole • Debi Cornwall • Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes • Cristina de Middel • Phyllis B. Dooney and Jardine Libaire • Eliot Dudik and Arielle Greenberg • Amy Elkins • Walker Evans and James Agee • LaToya Ruby Frazier • Lauren Greenfield • Orestes Gonzalez • Alex Harris and William deBuys • The Hampton Institute Camera Club and Paul Laurence Dunbar • Lauren Henkin and Kirsten Rian • Dorothea Lange and Paul Schuster Taylor • Elizabeth Matheson and Michael McFee • Gideon Mendel • Wright Morris • Nicholas Muellner • Bea Nettles and Connie Nettles • Rebecca Norris Webb • Thomas Ogle and William Wordsworth • Sylvia Plachy • Mary Ellen Mark • Sally Mann • Zanele Muholi • Lauren Pond • Maggie Lee Sayre and Tom Rankin • Collier Schorr • Clarissa Sligh • Aileen M. Smith and W. Eugene Smith• William Henry Fox Talbot • James Van Der Zee, Owen Dodson, and Camille Billops • John Willis
The Sweet Flypaper of Life
Photographs by Roy DeCarava | Text by Langston Hughes
June 8, 2019 – October 27, 2019 | Duke University, Durham, NC
This exhibition offers a unique opportunity to celebrate and study the classic collaborative photobook by Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes. For this special exhibit, all 106 pages from the recent facsimile reprinting of The Sweet Flypaper of Life are installed in the Photography Gallery to allow viewers a rare opportunity to examine the entire sequence of the 141 photographs included in the book, as well as the relationships between text and image from page to page.
Manifest : Photogaphs by Wendel White
February 17 - June 3, 2018 | Duke University, Durham, NC
The Manifest portfolio consists of photographic representations of objects, documents, photographs, and books held in various public collections throughout the U.S. These repositories include various elements of material culture such as diaries, slave collars, human hair, a drum, souvenirs, and other objects, some with great significance and others simply quotidian representations of daily life in the history of the African American community. Wendel White is increasingly interested in the residual power of the past to inhabit these material remains. The ability of objects to transcend lives, centuries, and millennia, suggests a remarkable mechanism for folding time, bringing the past and the present into a shared space that is uniquely suited to artistic exploration.
Tintype, Fenton History Center, Jamestown, New York by Wendel White
October 29, 2016 - February 26, 2017 | Duke University, Durham, NC
A group exhibition highlighting contemporary depictions of the American flag from around the country to coincide with the Presidential election and inauguration. Featuring photographs by Rob Amberg, Debi Fleming Caffery, Cedric Chatterley, Vince Cianni, Frank Espada, Danny Wilcox, Frazier, William Gedney, Sarah Hoskins, Michael Itkoff, Chris Johnson, Renée Jacobs, James Karales, Paul Kwilecki, Olive Pierce, Mel Rosenthal, Jay Turner Frey Seawell, Rebecca Sittler, and Jennifer Stratton.
Image: Promote Dialogue by Olive Pierce
Intimate Gestures: Handmade Books by William Gedney
November 12, 2015 - March 1, 2016 | Chappell Family Gallery, Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, NC
Intimate Gestures: Handmade Books by William Gedney surveys the photographer’s little known practice of making photobooks by hand, a pursuit he was devoted to throughout his entire career. The exhibit features seven completed photobooks and four book projects that were in-progress at the time of Gedney’s death in 1989, as well as handmade journals and related ephemera. All of the books were conceived, designed, and constructed by Gedney and correspond to his major photographic series produced in Eastern Kentucky, New York, San Francisco, and Benares, India between 1954 and 1980.
While Gedney’s photographs have been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Center for Documentary Studies, George Eastman House, the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Intimate Gestures is the first exhibit to highlight Gedney’s work in book form and the first time his entire collection of handmade books have been publically displayed.
An Everyday Affair, Selling the Kodak Image to America 1888-1989
April 10 – September 13, 2014, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Durham, NC
The idea gradually dawned on me that what we were doing was not merely making dry plates, but that we were starting out to make photography an everyday affair.” —George Eastman, founder of the Eastman Kodak Company
This exhibit surveys 101 years of Eastman Kodak ads to examine the ideology of simplicity and pleasure that the company sold to America with its products.
Faraway Nearby: Duke and UNC-CH MFA Photography Faculty Exhibition, Cassilhaus Gallery, Durham, NC
Co-Curator: Huston Paschal
Artists: Alex Harris, William Noland, Tom Rankin, elin o’Hara slavick, Hồng-Ân Trương, and Jeff Whetstone
Dead Flowers by elin o’hara slavick
Total Reflective Abstraction: Selections from the Cassilhaus Collection, Cassilhaus Gallery, Durham, NC
Artists: Masao Yamamoto, Hiroshi Wantanabe, David Goldes, John Menapace, André Kertész, Mark Steinmetz, Frank Hunter, Doug Keyes, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Lee Friedlander, Aaron Siskind, Connie Imboden, David Hilliard, Kenneth Josephson, Ray K Metzker, Tamas Deszo
André Kertész, Martinique
Installation View
New Beginnings, Founders Hall Gallery, George Mason University, Arlington, VA
Artists: Deborah Carroll Anzinger, Reuben Breslar, Treva Elwood, Jennifer Walton
Deborah Carroll Anzinger, Moment
E5: Rangefinder, Transformer, Washington, D.C.
Artists: Kristina Bilonick, Michael Matason, Jillian Pichocki, Bryan Whitson
Installation View
Feature in the Washington Post Express
By Chance, The District of Columbia Arts Center, Washington, D.C.
Artists: Jym Davis, Wendy Downs, Andy Holtin & Galo Moncayo, T.M. Lowery, Michael Matason, Larinda Meinburg
Andy Holtin & Galo Moncayo, Search