Aaron Turner to Join Stamps School of Art & Design as Assistant Professor

Artist and educator Aaron Turner will join the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design this fall as an assistant professor.

“I’m excited to join Stamps,” said Turner. ​“I’m drawn to the school’s interdisciplinary approach, which aligns closely with my own artistic and academic journey.”

Born and raised in the Arkansas Delta, Turner is known for his work exploring identity, history, and the Black American experience through photography. Using a 4×5 view camera, he creates still-life studies that fuse abstraction, historical narrative, and personal memory. His most recent book, Moves from the Archive, weaves together still life, appropriation, and painting to interrogate the complexities of Black American representation. 

Turner most recently served as an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Arkansas School of Art and as the founding Director of the Center for Art as Lived Experience. His areas of research interest include photography as a transformative process for understanding place, identity, abstraction, archives, and aggregation.

Turner’s ongoing project Black Alchemy—developed during his time at Rutgers University — serves as a lens through which he contemplates the past, present, and future. ​“Black stands for identity and its nuances, but also for a pictorial approach,” he said. ​“Different shades of black inherently reveal depth — there are a lot of complex conversations that can be addressed through abstraction in shadows, light, layers.”

Turner received an M.A. from Ohio University and an M.F.A. from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers. His accolades include fellowships and residencies from the Houston Center for Photography, Visual Studies Workshop, Light Work, the Penumbra Foundation, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, among others.

His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the George Eastman Museum. His writing and photography have been featured in TIME Magazine, The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, Aperture, and Columbia University Press.

In addition to his artistic practice, Turner is a curator and advocate. His forthcoming manuscript, The Archive as Liberation, set for publication in May 2025, will feature original research by five artists and five writers. An exhibition format of the publication was most recently on view at the Silver Eye Center for Photography, and will be on view at Light Work this summer, with future locations pending. Turner is also the host of the Photographers of Color Podcast, a platform to highlight the work of fellow artists, which will inform a future book project. His curatorial work has been recognized by Blue Sky Gallery (Portland, OR), The Phoenix Museum of Art, The Center for Creative Photography (University of Arizona), and the Terra Foundation of American Art. He also served as co-curator of Resounding Sovereign Expressions: Resurgent Indigenuity in Ozark Arts Practice and Scholarship.

“Early on in my career I pursued photojournalism, so even now I approach my art work as a journalist would, I want to know who, what, when , where, and why as I form the conceptual ideas within my studio practice,” Turner said. ​“I want to help students master the technical aspects of art making, but most of all I want to help them become critical thinkers. In the classroom I do my best to foster a family environment —supportive, open, and driven by dialogue.”

With a career deeply rooted in exploring culture, history, and visual storytelling, Turner said he looks forward to the challenge and inspiration that the University of Michigan offers. ​“The Stamps School has an amazing reputation,” he said. ​“As an artist and educator, I’m looking forward to joining this vibrant community.”