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Drew Sawyer is an art historian and a curator, who holds the title of the Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He has previously held curatorial positions at the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Columbus Museum of Art, where he co-founded the Center for Art and Social Engagement (CASE) through a major grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. He received a 2020 Award for Excellence from the Association of Art Museum Curators. Sawyer holds a Ph.D. in Art History from Columbia University, focusing on North American art and its intersections with histories around labor, class, race, gender, and sexuality. He is a regular contributor to scholarly volumes, exhibition catalogues, journals, and magazines.

His exhibitions include Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines (2023), Suneil Sanzgiri: Here the Earth Grows Gold (2023); Jimmy DeSana: Submission (2022); John Edmonds: A Sidelong Glance (2020); Garry Winogrand: Color (2019); Liz Johnson Artur: Dusha (2019); Art after Stonewall, 1969-1989 (2019); Isaac Julien: Looking for Langston (2018); Allan Sekula: Aerospace Folktales and Other Stories (2017); Lucy Raven: Low Relief (2016); and 'Social Forces Visualized': Photography and Scientific Charity, 1900-1920 (2011). 

Sawyer has taught at Columbia University, Yale School of Art, and Image Text Ithaca MFA Program. He has recently organized and participated in talks with artists Khalik Allah, Basma Alsharif, John Divola, John Edmonds, David Horvitz, Liz Johnson Artur, Mary Lucier, Mark McKnight, Lisa Oppenheim, Elle Perez, Sasha Phyars-Burgess, Lucy Raven, Joseph Rodriguez, Cameron Rowland, and AL Steiner. In 2017, he co-organized with Sarah Miller a two day symposium, “Reinventing Documentary Photography in the 1970s," which included contributions by Katherine Bussard, David Campany, Heather Diack, Nicholas Frobes-Cross, David Hartt, Solveig Nelson, Jorge Ribalta, Robert Slifkin, and Siona Wilson.