ARTIST TALK: Ace Lehner on Portraiture, Identity, & Representation
Friday, September 4th, 2026 at 5:30pm
Free & open to the public
Portraiture, Identity and Representation
Join us for an artist talk with Ace Lehner, a photographer and professor at the University of Vermont, for a conversation centered on portraiture, identity, and representation. Lehner will discuss their creative practice and share insights into the ways photographic images can shape, question, and expand how we understand the self and others.
This talk offers an opportunity to consider portraiture not only as a way of depicting a person, but as a space for dialogue around visibility, authorship, perception, and the complex relationship between photographer, subject, and viewer. Through this broad lens, the event will invite reflection on how photography can engage with questions of identity and representation in both personal and cultural contexts.
About the artist:
Dr. Ace Lehner is an interdisciplinary visual culture scholar and artist specializing in critical engagement with identity and representation. Lehner’s areas of expertise include trans and queer visual culture and theory, critical approaches to race and representation, modern and contemporary art history and visual culture, photography history and theory, and performance.
Lehner’s writing on art and visual culture has appeared in Art Journal, Cultural Politics, Journal of Cultural Analysis and Social Change, Journal on Images and Culture, Media-N: Journal of the New Media Caucus, REFRACT, Visual Studies and more. Lehner’s scholarship has also appeared in numerous anthologies, including a chapter co-authored with Amelia G. Jones in Companion to Contemporary Art in a Global Framework (edited by Jane Chin Davidson and Amelia G. Jones, published by Wiley Blackwell, 2023). Lehner recently guest edited the first-ever issue of Art Journal dedicated to trans visual culture. Lehner’s current book project, Trans Representations: Decolonizing Visual Theory in Contemporary Photography (working title), is based on their dissertation research, which won them the College Art Association Professional Development Fellowship in 2020.
Lehner’s artistic practice primarily utilizes photography, installation, and performance to mine the complex relationship between representations and the constitution of identities. Lehner’s project Barbershop: The Art of Queer Failure recently been featured in a solo exhibition at Brewer Harris Projects in Syracuse NY, at the Fleming Museum in Burlington VT, and Practice Gallery in Philadelphia, PA. Lehner has exhibited at museums, galleries, and alternative spaces throughout the United States and Canada, including Berry Campbell Gallery, New York, NY; the International Center of Photography, New York, NY; Geary Contemporary, Millerton, NY; El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY; The Fleming Museum, Burlington, VT; SOMArts, San Francisco, CA; The National Queer Arts Festival, San Francisco CA; The GLBT Historical Society Museum, San Francisco, CA; SF Camerawork, San Francisco, CA; The Wassaic Project in Wassaic NY, La Centrale Gallery Powerhouse, Montreal Quebec, Canada; and many others.Lehner is the recipient of numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, including the Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship in Fine Arts and the College Art Association Professional Development Fellowship. Lehner has delivered over 50 public talks and keynotes across North America and Europe and participated in over 60 exhibitions across the US and Canada.
Lehner has taught in museum education for two decades and piloted the first ever Queer Tours at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York NY. Lehner has taught at California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA; Fashion Institute of Technology, New York NY; International Center of Photography New York, NY; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Parsons School of Design, The New School, New York, NY; University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Santa Cruz and is currently Tenure Track Assistant Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Vermont, where they also are affiliate faculty in Gender Sexuality and Women’s Studies and the Honors College.
Lehner holds a Ph.D. in History of Art and Visual Culture from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MFA in Fine Art / MA in Visual Studies from California College of the Arts.
This event is free, open to all, and no advance registration is required. We hope to see you there!
Find a complete list of upcoming artist talks and events at VCP here.