Audrey Sands appointed associate curator of photography at the Harvard Art Museums

The Harvard Art Museums have appointed Audrey Sands as their Richard L. Menschel Associate Curator of Photography. As a member of the museums’ Division of Modern and Contemporary Art, Sands will steward a growing collection of photographs and time-based media that includes approximately 75,000 objects. She begins her role at Harvard on Feb. 3, 2025.

Sands currently serves as the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. She is a member of the curatorial team for the multi-venue exhibition “Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985” (2025–26), and she also contributed to the exhibition “Gordon Parks: Camera Portraits from the Corcoran Collection” (2024–25). From 2019 to 2022, she was the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson, a joint appointment with the Phoenix Art Museum, where her exhibitions included “Farewell Photography: The Hitachi Collection of Postwar Japanese Photographs, 1961–1989” (2022) and the critically acclaimed “Freedom Must Be Lived: Marion Palfi’s America, 1940–1978” (2021–22), which surveyed the photographer’s career-long commitment to social justice advocacy.

An accomplished historian and curator, Sands specializes in 20th-century American photography, with a broader focus on the materials, institutions, and politics of the medium. She holds a Ph.D. and M.Phil. in art history from Yale University, an M.St. in history of art and visual culture from the University of Oxford, and a B.A. in art history from Barnard College. Sands brings nearly 20 years of experience across academic and museum settings.

“We are thrilled to welcome Audrey to our curatorial staff,” said Sarah Ganz Blythe, the Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard Art Museums. “She brings a deep commitment to scholarship and an expansive approach to interpreting and providing access to historical and contemporary photographic practices.”