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 Danny Lyon, William Eggleston, Bill Yates, and Gregory Crewdson.

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

His new monograph on the photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard will appear in spring 2017.

Also in spring 2017, Nemerov will deliver the 66th annual Andrew W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The topic of the lectures will be: "The Forest: America in the 1830s."