Join Makeda Best, Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at the Harvard Art Museums, for a tour of the exhibition.

Makeda Best

Makeda Best oversees the museums’ photography collections. Her scholarly interests focus on 19th- and 20th-century American photography, with a special interest in photojournalism, documentary, war photography, and text and image works.

Prior to her appointment at the Harvard Art Museums, Best was assistant professor in visual studies at the California College of the Arts, specializing in the history of photography, and was an assistant curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in the Department of History of Art and Architecture. She earned a B.F.A. and M.F.A. in photography from the California Institute of the Arts.

Best co-edited and contributed to Conflict, Identity, and Protest in American Art (2015), which explores the powerful relationship between artistic production and cultures of conflict in the United States. Her forthcoming book is on the Civil War–era photographer Alexander Gardner.