He came to Alfred University from the School of Art and Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, a position he had held for three years.

Prior to becoming dean at FIT, Mr. Lewis was chair of the art department at California State University at Northridge for six years, and was a tenured professor, teaching visual arts, as well. From 1991 to 1995, Mr. Lewis was on the faculty of California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) while also administering a public art program for the City of Los Angeles. Other teaching experience includes stints at Otis Parsons Institute and UCLA, in Los Angeles, Carnegie Mellon University and the San Francisco Art Institute.

As an arts administrator, Mr. Lewis was a project coordinator and then project manager for Jackie Robinson Foundation in New York, and was co-founder and director of Fashion Moda in New York, where he curated and mounted more than 35 exhibitions and 120 performance events nationwide.

Mr. Lewis has served on numerous art school evaluation panels; is a current member of the board of directors of the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD), the accrediting agency for art schools; is a past member of the board of directors and a past president of the National Council of Art Administrators; and currently serves as a member of the board of directors of the Bronx Museum of the Arts and president and member of the board of the Noah Purifoy Foundation, Los Angeles.

He is also a member of the National Scholarship Selection Committee for the Jackie Robinson Foundation in New York, and the board of directors of California Lawyers for the Arts. Lewis is a full member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

As a visual and performing artist, Mr. Lewis has had numerous solo exhibitions of his work both nationally and internationally for more than two decades, and has participated in several residency programs including Anderson Ranch, Cite des Artes in Paris and the Darkroom Projects in Milan, Italy. He is the recipient of several awards, commissions and fellowships, including an Award of Excellence from Communication Arts, several grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Ford Foundation Fellowship and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship.

Since 1994, Mr. Lewis has been a writer for Art in America, and previously has been a contributing editor for Artspace Magazine and a correspondent for Contemporanea.