Working with photography, sculpture, and site-specific installations, Leslie Hewitt addresses fluid notions of time. Her work oscillates between the illusionary potential of photography and the physical weight of sculpture. In her photographed arrangements, she isolates personal ephemera and the residue of mass culture to consider the fragile nature of quotidian life.
Hewitt studied at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, the Yale University School of Art, and at New York University, where she was a Clark Fellow in the Africana and Visual Culture Studies programs. She was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and the recipient of the 2008 Art Matters research grant to the Netherlands. A selection of recent and forthcoming exhibitions include the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem; Artists Space in New York; Project Row Houses in Houston; and LA > < ART in Los Angeles. Hewitt has held residencies at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the American Academy in Berlin, Germany amongst others.
Hewitt was part of the faculty at Barnard College in the department of Art History from 2012 - 2017, where she was actively engaged in the development of the Harlem Semester partnering with the Studio Museum in Harlem. She was a faculty member at The Cooper Union, School of Art from 2017 - 2022 , where she co-organized the Intra-Disciplinary Seminar/Public Lecture series with curator/writer Omar Barrada and was involved in the formation of The Augusta Savage Colloquium.
She is associate professor of art at Rice University, School of Humanities, Department of Art.
Exhibition Selections
Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal
Hammer Museum
February 9 - May 2025
Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien
June 7 - September 22, 2024
Menil Collection
April 26 - August 25, 2024
Dia Art Foundation Bridgehampton
June 24, 2022 - June 5, 2023
Currency: Photography Beyond Capture
Triennial of Photography Hamburg
May 20 - September 18, 2022
The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art Dublin
May 28 - June 3, 2022
Guggenheim Museum
April 2 - September 27, 2021
The Metropolitan Museum
October 19, 2020 - May 9, 2021
American Women: Infinite Journey
La Patinoire Royale, Brussels, Belgium
January 01 - March 21, 2020
Perrotin New York , US
September 11 - October 26, 2019
Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection
Whitney Museum of American Art
April 27, 2016 – February 12, 2017
Ordinary Pictures
Walker Art Center
February 27, 2016 – October 9, 2016
Collective Stance
Sculpture Center
May 1, 2016 – August 1, 2016
Collective Stance
Guggenheim Museum
November 20 - March 23, 2015
Time / Image
Blaffer Art Museum | University of Houston
September 26 - December 19, 2015
A Story within a Story
Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA)
September 12 - November 22, 2015