Riva Lehrer

Riva Lehrer is an artist, writer and curator who focuses on the socially challenged body. She is best known for representations of people whose physical embodiment, sexuality, or gender identity have long been stigmatized.

Her work has been exhibited in venues including the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian, Yale University, the United Nations, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Arnot Museum, the DeCordova Museum, and the Frye Museum.

Her awards include a Ford Foundation Fellowship, 3Arts MacDowell Fellowship, Carnegie Mellon Fellowship, Wynn Newhouse Foundation Grant, Illinois Arts Council Grant, and National Endowment for the Arts Grant. Lehrer’s memoir, Golem Girl (October 2020, One World/ Penguin Random House) won the 2020 Barbellion Prize for Literature and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
She is represented by Regal Hoffman & Associates and by Zolla/Lieberman Gallery. Lehrer is on faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.