Lorie Novak’s photographs, installations, and internet projects have been in numerous exhibitions including solo exhibitions at ArtSway, Hampshire, England; The International Center for Photography, NY; Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Houston Center for Photography; Breda Fotografica, the Netherlands; Addison Gallery, Andover, MA; and Stanford University Art Museum. Her work has been in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, NY; The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC.; Art Institute of Chicago; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, among others. She has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, and residencies at the Bogliasco Foundation, Italy; the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center (Italy), ArtSway (England), Mac Dowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Djerassi Foundation. Her photographs are in numerous permanent collections including the Art Institute of Chicago; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA; George Eastman House, Rochester, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Museum of Modern Art, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, NY; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Novak's Collected Visions project, 1996-present, exploring how family photographs shape our memory, was one of the earliest interactive storytelling sites.  She was Chair of Photography and Imaging from 1999 to 2006. In 1996, she initiated and now co-directs with Erika deVries the Department’s community collaboration program, where NYU students teach photography and digital imaging to NYC high school students. Novak is also Chair of the Visual Arts Steering Committee at NYU, and the Chair of the Arts Committee and a Board Member of the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics in the Americas.