Leslie Umberger

For over twenty years, Leslie Umberger, curator of folk and self-taught art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, has focused on artists who navigated autonomous creative paths, often in the face of significant oppression or personal challenge. She has written and spoken extensively about power structures and marginalization within the art world and worked to assert and integrate a diverse array of artists and their work into the larger narrative of American art. Notable projects at SAAM include the retrospective exhibition: Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor, and the reinstallation of SAAM’s galleries for folk and self-taught art). Between Worlds was accompanied by a major monograph, co-published by SAAM and Princeton University Press (2018), which was awarded the 2021 Smithsonian Institution Secretary’s Research Prize for a single-author book. Other notable publications include: Something to Take My Place: The Art of Lonnie Holley (2015); Untitled: The Art of James Castle (2014), and Sublime Spaces & Visionary Worlds: Built Environments of Vernacular Artists (2007).

–March, 2022