Leslie Umberger, Curator

Leslie Umberger is the senior curator of folk and self-taught art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She joined the museum staff in September 2012.  

Umberger has organized major exhibitions at SAAM, including “Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work” (2025), “Pattern and Paradox: The Quilts of Amish Women” (2024), “We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection” (2023), “Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor” (2018), “Mingering Mike: Supersonic Greatest Hits” (2015) and “Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget” (2014). In 2023, she collaborated on the reinstallation of the museum’s modern and contemporary art galleries as part of an effort to include self-taught artists throughout the story of American art. In 2016, she oversaw the reinstallation of the museum’s galleries for folk and self-taught art, showcasing nearly 60 new acquisitions that advance SAAM’s longstanding commitment to championing artists working in this tradition.  

From 1998 to 2012, Umberger was senior curator of exhibitions and collections at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisc.  

In addition to projects at the museum, Umberger has written or contributed to exhibition catalogs, including No Idle Hands: The Myths & Makers of Tramp Art (Museum of International Folk Art, 2017), As Essential as Dreams: Self-Taught Art from the Collection of Stephanie and John Smither (The Menil Collection, 2016), and Something to Take My Place: The Art of Lonnie Holley (Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, 2015). She contributed an essay to the catalog for SAAM’s 2014 exhibition “Untitled: The Art of James Castle.” She also has written for numerous publications, including the Archives of American Art Journal and Raw Vision.

Umberger earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a master’s degree in art history from the University of Colorado at Boulder.