Photography didn’t particularly interest Sherman as an art history major and later as a grad student at Courtauld Institute of Art in London. But postgrad internships at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the International Center for Photography (ICP) in New York City changed that. “Photography is still in its infancy,” says Sherman, ICP’s new senior curator and director of exhibitions and collections. “It’s always changing. Just when you think you can define the borders or the limits of what is and is not photography, it moves, it changes, it morphs. That, to me, is fundamentally exciting.” 

Working at the Whitney from 2010 to 2022, Sherman helped acquire several pieces by El Salvadorean photographer Muriel Hasbun, now the subject of Sherman’s first show at ICP, Muriel Hasbun: Tracing Terruño. “Hasbun has been making important work since the late 1980s,” Sherman says. “This will grant her the level of recognition I know she deserves.” Jane Panetta, the Whitney’s director of the collection, cites Sherman’s dedication to highlighting artists who haven’t already garnered critical attention. “Elisabeth has her ear to the ground for emerging trends in photography.”

“A lot of my work deals with the dialogue between the past and the present,” Hasbun says. “It’s exciting to have somebody recognize it and amplify it.” The exhibit runs through January 8.