Sarah Lerner
Concentration: Public History of the Built Environment
Internship: Curatorial Intern at the Tenement Museum
Personal Statement:
After graduating from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a BA in Studio Art, I lived in Washington DC where I worked as an intern at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. From 2016 to 2018 I served as the Director of Events at Dupont Underground, a 501(c)(3) cultural organization transforming a public work – the subterranean streetcar station in Dupont Circle, Washington DC – into a new public infrastructure to support creative exchange.
As a trained visual artist and historic preservationist, I seek to document and scrutinize the axiomatic language of the built environment through archival research, writing, and photography. The goal of these multidisciplinary studies are to expose the often overlooked social hierarchies and underrepresented cultural heritages that manifest in the historic fabric of the constructed American landscape.
Thesis Research: Sanitary Acculturation: The Social History of Progressive Era Public Bath Houses in Philadelphia
Internship: Curatorial Intern at the Tenement Museum
Personal Statement:
After graduating from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a BA in Studio Art, I lived in Washington DC where I worked as an intern at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. From 2016 to 2018 I served as the Director of Events at Dupont Underground, a 501(c)(3) cultural organization transforming a public work – the subterranean streetcar station in Dupont Circle, Washington DC – into a new public infrastructure to support creative exchange.
As a trained visual artist and historic preservationist, I seek to document and scrutinize the axiomatic language of the built environment through archival research, writing, and photography. The goal of these multidisciplinary studies are to expose the often overlooked social hierarchies and underrepresented cultural heritages that manifest in the historic fabric of the constructed American landscape.
Thesis Research: Sanitary Acculturation: The Social History of Progressive Era Public Bath Houses in Philadelphia
