Jane Livingston

Jane Shelton Livingston (born 12 February 1944) is an American art curator. She is the author and co-author of numerous books and catalogs.

Livingston was born in Upland, California.

From 1967 to 1975, she was curator of 20th-century art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She was editor of the Richard Diebenkorn Catalogue Raisonné and as of 2011 was working as an independent curator.^[1]

In 1975 she became associate director and chief curator at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, but resigned in 1989, prompted by the Corcoran's cancellation of a show of work by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.^[2][3] Livingston had been on sabbatical, writing a book under a Guggenheim Fellowship when the exhibition was cancelled;^[4] when she returned, she made it clear that she would not have cancelled the show.^[5] Livingston had arranged the installation, which was financed in part by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).^[6]

She organized a major museum exhibition of Chicano art,^[7] and, together with Marcia Tucker, the first major museum exhibition of Bruce Nauman.^[1] Other exhibitions include her show of National Geographic, "illustrative" photography.^[8] She and curator John Beardsley also curated an exhibition of black outsider artists in 1982.^[9] This show "marked an explosion of interest in the work of African American artists."^[10] Livingston's The New York School of Photography (1992) has been described as a "path-breaking study", first identifying the titular subject.^[11] Livingston curated a show of John Alexander's works at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2008.^[12]

Livingston's work on The Art of Richard Diebenkorn (1997) helped produce a book that collected the most important works of Richard Diebenkorn, who had been under-represented in publishing.^[13] The catalogue raisonné she compiled on the artist appeared in 2016.

• Livingston, Jane (1972). Bruce Nauman: Work from 1965 to 1972. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art. ISBN 9780875870519.
• Livingston, Jane; Beardsley, John; Perry, Regenia (1982). Black Folk Art in America, 1930–1980. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. OCLC 564711070.
• Livingston, Jane (1984). Ad Reinhardt. Washington, D.C.: Corcoran Gallery of Art. OCLC 563138463.
• Livingston, Jane; Krauss, Rosalind E.; Adès, Dawn (1985). L'Amour Fou: Photography & Surrealism. New York: Abbeville Press. OCLC 560453860.
• Livingston, Jane; Elderfield, John; Fine, Ruth (1997). The Art of Richard Diebenkorn. Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520212572.
• Livingston, Jane (1992). The New York School: Photographs, 1936–1963. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang. ISBN 9781556702396.
• Livingston, Jane (1994). The Art of Photography at National Geographic. Köln: Evergreen/Benedikt Taschen. ISBN 9783822893111.
• Livingston, Jane; Nochlin, Linda; Lee, Yvette Y. (2002). The Paintings of Joan Mitchell. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520235687.
• Livingston, Jane; Greene, Alison de Lima (2008). John Alexander–A Retrospective. Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. ISBN 9780300125061.
• Cohen, Mark; Livingston, Jane (2015). Frame—A Retrospective. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 9781477303726.
• Livingston, Jane (2016). Richard Diebenkorn: The catalogue raisonné. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300184501.