A photograph of a woman standing in front of artwork.

Leslie Umberger

Curator (Folk and Self-Taught Art)

Leslie Umberger is the curator of folk and self-taught art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She joined the museum staff in September 2012. Her research interests include artists who navigated their own artistic path, often in oppressive environments. She has specialized also in artists who transformed their personal realms into comprehensive art environments, often over extended periods of time. Umberger is known for situating such artists within specific cultural contexts and establishing meaningful frameworks for the art they have made. See full staff bio. 

Exhibitions

  • Media - 2016.14.5 - SAAM-2016.14.5_2 - 129305
    Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor
    Bill Traylor is regarded today as one of the most important American artists of the twentieth century. His drawn and painted imagery embodies the crossroads of multiple worlds: black and white, rural and urban, old and new. His life—which spanned slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Great Migration and foreshadowed the era of Civil Rights—offers a rare perspective to the larger story of America.
    September 27, 2018 – April 7, 2019
  • Media - 2013.8.28 - SAAM-2013.8.28_1 - 88697
    Mingering Mike’s Supersonic Greatest Hits
    The Mingering Mike collection comprises artworks constructed as part of the artist’s youthful fantasy of becoming a famous soul singer and songwriter, including LP albums made from painted cardboard, original album art, song lyrics and liner notes, self-recorded 45 rpm singles and more, all tracing the career of a would-be superstar.
    February 27, 2015 – August 1, 2015
  • Family Supper, by Ralph Fasanella
    Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget
    Ralph Fasanella (1914-1997) celebrated the common man and tackled complex issues of postwar America in colorful, socially-minded paintings. Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget celebrates the 100th anniversary of the artist’s birth and brings together key works from a career spanning fifty-two years.
    May 1, 2014 – August 2, 2014

Books

  • Cover for the catalogue "We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection"
    We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection
    We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection traces the rise of self-taught artists in the twentieth century and examines how, despite wide-ranging societal, racial, and gender-based obstacles, their creativity and bold self-definition became major forces in American art. The exhibition features recent gifts to the museum from two generations of collectors, Margaret Z. Robson and her son Douglas O. Robson, and will be on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum July 1, 2022 through March 26, 2023.
  • A book cover with a blue house and people on the roof with a dog on the ground.
    Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor
    The official catalogue for the exhibition Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor, on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum from September 28, 2018 through April 7, 2019, is by curator Leslie Umberger, with an introduction by artist Kerry James Marshall.
  • JamesCastle_500.jpg
    Untitled: The Art of James Castle
    Untitled: The Art of James Castle celebrates one of the most enigmatic American artists of the twentieth century. For nearly seven decades, Castle gathered materials around his rural Idaho home, such as packaging, advertisements, string, and soot, and created an elaborate and umistakable representation of his world.

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