Discover the pivotal moment when Americans chose to ignore the false foundations of our country’s racial hierarchies.

Sarah Lewis’s latest book, The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America, is a masterpiece of historical detective work, uncovering one of the most damaging lies in American history. There was a time when Americans were confronted with the fictions shaping up national ideas about race—and learned to disregard them. The surprising catalyst occurred in the 19th century. During a war for independence in the Caucasus region of Eastern Europe, images of Caucasian people captivated the American public but also showed that the place from which we derive “Caucasian” for whiteness was not white at all. Cultural and political figures ranging from P. T. Barnum to Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois to Woodrow Wilson recognized these fictions and more, exploiting, unmasking, critiquing, or burying them.

Speaking with historian, author, and artist Nell Irvin Painter, Sarah Lewis shows how visual tactics have long secured our distorted regime of racial hierarchy—and offers a way toward dismantling it.

To join the event in person | Doors will open 45 minutes before the program begins. Purchase a drink from the NYPL bar and a snack from Amy's Bread while you mingle before the event! For LIVE from NYPL events, we generally overbook to ensure a full house. Please arrive early to avoid disappointment; we will do our best to accommodate everyone. Booked seats that have not been claimed will be released shortly before start time, and seats may become available then. A standby line will form 45 minutes before the program.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Sarah Lewis is the founder of Vision & Justice and the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities and Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She is the author of The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America (Harvard University Press), the bestseller, The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery (Simon & Schuster), and the forthcoming book Vision & Justice (One World/Random House). Lewis is the editor of the award-winning volumes, Vision & Justice by Aperture magazine and the anthology on the work of Carrie Mae Weems (MIT Press). She is the organizer of the landmark Vision & Justice Convening at Harvard University, and co-editor of the Vision & Justice Book Series, launched in partnership with Aperture. Her awards and recognition include an honorary degree from Pratt Institute, the Infinity Award, the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, a Cullman Fellowship, the Freedom Scholar Award (ASALH), the Arthur Danto/ASA Prize from the American Philosophical Association, and the Photography Network Book Prize. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Artforum, and The New York Review of Books, and her work has been the subject of profiles from The Boston Globe to The New York Times. Lewis is a sought-after public speaker, with a mainstage TED talk that received over 3 million views. She received her BA from Harvard University, an MPhil from Oxford University, an MA from Courtauld Institute of Art, and her PhD from Yale University. She lives in New York City and Cambridge, MA.

Nell Irvin Painter, Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, Princeton University, is the author of scholarly books of history including the New York Times bestseller The History of White People; Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol, an awardee of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association; and the National Critics Circle finalist Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she has received honorary degrees from institutions such as Yale, Wesleyan, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Dartmouth, and she has served as president of the Organization of American Historians and the Southern Historical Association. After a Ph.D. in history from Harvard, she earned degrees in painting from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers and the Rhode Island School of Design. When not writing essays and drawing self-portraits, she makes artist’s books that visualize people and history, often in residencies such as MacDowell, Yaddo, Ucross, and Bogliasco. She currently serves as Madame Chairman of MacDowell. In 2024 Doubleday published her essay collection I Just Keep Talking, named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and Kirkus Reviews. She is working on a new book on Sojourner Truth, entitled Sojourner Truth Was a New Yorker, and She Didn’t Say That.

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ACCESSIBILITY

In-Person | Assistive listening devices and/or hearing loops are available at the venue. You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning service by emailing your request at least two weeks in advance of the event: email accessibility@nypl.org or use this Gmail template. This venue is fully accessible to wheelchairs. 

Livestream | Captions and a transcript will be provided. Media used over the course of the conversation will be accompanied by alt text and/or audio description. You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation by emailing your request at least two weeks in advance of the event: email accessibility@nypl.org or use this Gmail template.

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Sarah Lewis © Stephanie Mitchell
Nell Irvin Painter © Dwight Carter