Lisa Farrington

Lisa Farrington is an award-winning art historian, Distinguished Professor Emerita at the City University of New York, and served as Associate Dean of Fine Arts and Director of the Gallery of Art at Howard University. Farrington won the Andy Warhol Foundation / Creative Capital Arts Writers Prize, the Spelman College / Atlanta University Endowed Chair in the Humanities, the Ford Foundation Education Fellowship, and three national awards for her Oxford University Press book on the history of African American women artists: "Creating Their Own Image." She is winner of two Lifetime Achievement Awards from artist Faith Ringgold’s Anyone Can Fly Foundation and from Howard University’s Annual James A. Porter Colloquium on African American Art. Farrington has lectured on African American, European, Haitian, and women’s art at museums and universities worldwide and published dozens of scholarly essays, as well as ten solo-authored books. Among these is a revisionist history of African American art—her second book for Oxford University Press: "African American Art: A Visual and Cultural History."

Farrington began her career at the Museum of Modern Art, followed by an Associate Professorship at Parsons School of Design’s New York and Paris campuses, and a post as Founding Chair of the Art & Music Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice / CUNY. Her most recent books are "Black Artists: in Their Own Words," part of the renowned Documents of 20th Century Art series (University of California Press, 2025) and "The World Before Racism: An Art Story" (Artist Book Foundation, 2025).