Alyssah Hall & Aryana Noroozi
Native New Yorker Lisa Henry moved to Riverside in 2010. She brought with her years of curatorial expertise in both photography and contemporary American art. In 2016, she became a guest curator for Riverside Art Museum (RAM) During the six years she served in this role, Henry facilitated several shows with the museum prior to being hired as a full-time curator in 2023.
Henry holds a Master of Arts Degree in Curatorial Studies from UCLA and previously worked as an independent curator and art consultant for institutions on the east and west coasts, including the California African American Museum, the High Museum of Art, the UCLA Hammer Museum, the Japanese American National Museum and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Henry is also passionate about and has experience in women-led and Black-led art, as well as other broad categories in the art space.
She currently has two exhibitions on display at RAM, Joel Sternfeld, located in the Members Gallery until September 14, 2025, and The Versatility of Pulp, co-curated with Denise Kreamer, featured in the Art Alliance Gallery,will remain open until October 12, 2025.
An art inspired life
Growing up in New York City, Henry went to museums with her family and was always very intrigued by art. She attended a high school where she was required to choose either a music or an art major and so naturally, Henry chose art.
“When I got to college, I had to take art history for my major, and I really loved it, and so I started from that time on focusing more on studying the history of art, and less and less on practicing art,” said Henry.
“I’m still very creative, and I’m crafty, and I like to make stuff. I love beautiful things. But it was in college where I really began to develop more like the study of…and writing about art, organizing exhibitions on campus, and really enjoying working with artists,” Henry continued.
Henry credits her passion for contemporary art expanding when she was a college student working in the on campus gallery. She was granted the freedom to collaborate with artists and learn how to navigate deadlines, staffing and budgets. While finishing her bachelor’s degree, Henry knew her goal was to work in a museum and that she wanted to come to the west for her graduate work. As a result, she pursued her MA in curatorial studies. Henry was excited to be in the curating field after graduating UCLA, but recalls the economy being in bad shape at that time.
“A lot of people were getting laid off. A lot of projects were kind of constricting, people’s budgets were constricting. When I first graduated, I had a couple of opportunities to guest curate, which was great,” Henry shared
“I was always applying to be part of museum staff, but I wasn’t getting any offers. I kept doing the guest curating, I kept plugging away, organizing proposals, doing some teaching on the side, pitching ideas to different arts organizations and community spaces,” Henry shared.
Henry still had many contacts on the East Coast and was invited to curate a show at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. For a year, Henry went back and forth, working on that show.
Later, Henry found herself in Riverside. Henry found the area was not only interesting, it is also an art hub close enough to LA and San Diego. She decided to give the Inland Empire a try. Initially, she did some work with the California Museum of Photography and eventually ended up working with RAM.
Henry’s current exhibition of Joel Sternfeld
The exhibition, On this Site, had been on the top of her mind to curate since January 2023. She had known about Sternfeld’s photography work for years and was a big fan of his series, “American Prospects,” in the late 80s. Sternfeld went around the country taking photos of American culture, spaces and landscapes in a quirky and unexpected way according to Henry. She found Sternfeld influential and appreciated his role in making color photography accepted as fine art opposed to strictly commercial.
“There’s certain ways that you can photograph this history of ours, American history. There’s protest, there’s document, and there’s what Joel Sternfeld has been doing since the 90s, in terms of not sensationalizing, but not shying away from our violent and often racist past,” Henry stated.
“[Sternfeld went to] sites around the country where really historic, impactful, often very violent things have happened. [T]o go to these locations and shoot them as they work, as opposed to trying to make a document that brings in what happened, or to dramatize the site in any way,” Henry continued.
Henry shared the steps of curating a show from a New York artist, including shipping borrowed art to California, and having it specifically framed and installed the way Sternfeld wished. She is proud of this exhibit that has come full circle from the time she knew she wanted to showcase it in January 2023 to its debut in January of 2025.
“I’ve always enjoyed working with this team. But being here as a full time staff member and now having some more responsibility for care of the collection…I am the person who vets proposals that come in and meetings with artists who want to show,” Henry shared.
“I will take an idea and bring it to our exhibitions committee and talk about why we should do a certain show. Now I’m on the other side of it. Whereas before, I was the one pitching…But now I’m really responsible for so much, it’s been wonderful,” said Henry.