A scholar of American art, Nemerov writes about the presence of art, the recollection of the past, and the importance of the humanities in our lives today. Committed to teaching the history of art more broadly as well as topics in American visual culture--the history of American photography, for example--he is a noted writer and speaker on the arts. His most recent books are Silent Dialogues: Diane Arbus and Howard Nemerov (2015), Wartime Kiss: Visions of the Moment in the 1940s (2013) and Acting in the Night: Macbeth and the Places of the Civil War (2010).  In 2011 he published To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America (2011), the catalogue to the exhibition of the same title he curated at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.  Among his recent essays are pieces on Winslow Homer, Jacob Lawrence, Carleton Watkins, Thomas Cole, and Joe Rosenthal.

Forthcoming publications, slated to appear in 2016, include individual essays on Gregory Crewdson, Charles Burchfield, Danny Lyon, and Grandma Moses. 

Nemerov's new book, Soulmaker: The Times of Lewis Hine,will appear in 2016, published by Princeton University Press.