About the Initiative
Vision & Justice is a catalytic civic initiative that generates original research, curricula, and programs that reveal the foundational role visual culture plays in generating equity and justice in America.
The initiative builds awareness of the impact of images in the public realm and their capacity to shape the interwoven fabric of individual identity, community collaboration, and democratic participation.
Through institutional collaborations, leadership convenings, and public programs, Vision & Justice serves as a partner and resource for civic and cultural leaders in fostering representational literacy and justice.
“How many movements began when an aesthetic encounter indelibly changed our inherited perceptions of the world?”
— Sarah Elizabeth Lewis
History
Vision & Justice is founded and spearheaded by art and cultural historian Sarah Elizabeth Lewis.
Visual representation, racial justice, and democracy in the United States have long been the focus of Lewis’ research practice, and underpin the Vision & Justice initiative, along with several key cornerstones, including:
The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery, Lewis’ 2014 book, which crystallized her thinking on the mobilizing power of aesthetic experiences.
Harvard University course “Vision and Justice: The Art of Race and American Citizenship” pioneered by Lewis in 2016 and made part of the university’s core curriculum in 2017.
The 2016 special issue of Aperture magazine dedicated to the role of photography in the African American experience, which Lewis guest edited and themed “Vision & Justice.”
Both the Aperture issue and the Harvard course take conceptual inspiration from the abolitionist and great nineteenth century thinker Frederick Douglass’ understudied Civil War speech, “Pictures and Progress,” about the transformative power of pictures to create a new vision for the nation. Built upon Douglass' historic scholarship and catalyzed by these contemporary projects, Vision & Justice is at the forefront of representational justice in the U.S.