Jane Livingston
Jane Livingston is an independent curator and author living in Flint Hill, Virginia. She grew up in Southern California and graduated from Pomona College with a major in art history; she received her Master’s in Fine Arts degree from Harvard University in 1966.
She was employed a Curator of Twentieth Century Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from 1967-1975. During her years in Los Angeles she wrote regular reviews for Artforum magazine, and for Art in America. It was there that she first became closely acquainted with Richard Diebenkorn. Her exhibitions for the Los Angeles County Museum include the first major museum exhibition of the artist Bruce Nauman (co-curated with the Whitney Museum’s Marcia Tucker), and the landmark Art and Technology, with Maurice Tuchman.
As Associate Director and Chief Curator at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, one of her first projects was to present the Diebenkorn retrospective organized by the Albright-Knox museum in 1975. At the Corcoran, she organized more than fifty exhibitions, most with publications. Among those was the 1981 Biennial in which Richard Diebenkorn's work was included along with paintings by Frank Stella, Joan Mitchell, Agnes Martin, and Richard Serra. Livingston established the Corcoran as one of America’s leading repositories and exhibitors of fine art photography. She organized one of the first major exhibitions of the Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo, with a (now collector’s-item) book, and published dozens of small monographs on contemporary photographers. In 1978, she presented the collection of the great photography collector Samuel Wagstaff at the Corcoran; through that connection, she came to know and champion the work of Robert Mapplethorpe. Years later, in 1989, she scheduled Mapplethorpe’s retrospective exhibition at the Corcoran after its premier showing at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art. The Corcoran Director and board cancelled the exhibition due to pressure from the United States Congress, whose oversight of the National Endowment for the Arts compelled it to censor artistic content. In protest, Livingston resigned from the Corcoran and has been an independent author and curator since that time.
During the Corcoran years (1975-1989) her commercially published books included George Vantongerloo; Black Folk Art in America; Lee Miller, Photographer; Odyssey: The Art of Photography at National Geographic; L’Amour Fou: Photography and Surrealism (with Rosalind Krauss); and Hispanic Art in the United States (with John Beardsley).
Livingston’s more recent books and exhibitions include The New York School: Photographs, 1936-1963 (Stewart, Tabori & Chang); Richard Avedon: Evidence (Random House, Whitney Museum of American Art); Zelda, An Illustrated Life: The Private World of Zelda Fitzgerald (Harry N. Abrams); Hospice: A Photographic Inquiry (Bulfinch/Little Brown, Corcoran Gallery of Art); The Art of Richard Diebenkorn (Whitney Museum of American Art, University of California Press); The Paintings of Joan Mitchell (Whitney and University of California); and The Quilts of Gee’s Bend and Thornton Dial (both with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston).
Jane Livingston has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation grant, a Kress Senior Fellowship at the National Gallery of Art, a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation study center, Bellagio, the Belgian Order of the Cross, and other awards and honorary degrees.
Catalogue Staff
Arlene Allsman, Research Associate
Angie Doctor, Research Associate
Dick Grant, Project Manager
Andrea Liguori, Director of Research & Associate Editor
Jane Livingston, Project Director & Editor
Carl Schmitz, Visual Resources & Information Manager
Collaboration
University of California Press, publisher of approximately 4,000 titles currently in print including Jane Livingston's 1997 book The Art of Richard Diebenkorn, will publish the catalogue raisonné. All financial support for the catalogue raisonné comes from contributions made to a fund administered by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which is composed of the de Young and Legion of Honor museums.
Professional Memberships
The Richard Diebenkorn Catalogue Raisonné is an institutional member of College Art Association, and individuals on staff belong to Catalogue Raisonné Scholars Association, Art Libraries Society, and Visual Resources Association.
Mailing List
To be added to a low-frequency email list for announcements on art exhibitions and the catalogue's publication, please send a message to elist@diebenkorn.org.
Jane Livingston is an independent curator and author living in Flint Hill, Virginia. She grew up in Southern California and graduated from Pomona College with a major in art history; she received her Master’s in Fine Arts degree from Harvard University in 1966.
She was employed a Curator of Twentieth Century Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from 1967-1975. During her years in Los Angeles she wrote regular reviews for Artforum magazine, and for Art in America. It was there that she first became closely acquainted with Richard Diebenkorn. Her exhibitions for the Los Angeles County Museum include the first major museum exhibition of the artist Bruce Nauman (co-curated with the Whitney Museum’s Marcia Tucker), and the landmark Art and Technology, with Maurice Tuchman.
As Associate Director and Chief Curator at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, one of her first projects was to present the Diebenkorn retrospective organized by the Albright-Knox museum in 1975. At the Corcoran, she organized more than fifty exhibitions, most with publications. Among those was the 1981 Biennial in which Richard Diebenkorn's work was included along with paintings by Frank Stella, Joan Mitchell, Agnes Martin, and Richard Serra. Livingston established the Corcoran as one of America’s leading repositories and exhibitors of fine art photography. She organized one of the first major exhibitions of the Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo, with a (now collector’s-item) book, and published dozens of small monographs on contemporary photographers. In 1978, she presented the collection of the great photography collector Samuel Wagstaff at the Corcoran; through that connection, she came to know and champion the work of Robert Mapplethorpe. Years later, in 1989, she scheduled Mapplethorpe’s retrospective exhibition at the Corcoran after its premier showing at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art. The Corcoran Director and board cancelled the exhibition due to pressure from the United States Congress, whose oversight of the National Endowment for the Arts compelled it to censor artistic content. In protest, Livingston resigned from the Corcoran and has been an independent author and curator since that time.
During the Corcoran years (1975-1989) her commercially published books included George Vantongerloo; Black Folk Art in America; Lee Miller, Photographer; Odyssey: The Art of Photography at National Geographic; L’Amour Fou: Photography and Surrealism (with Rosalind Krauss); and Hispanic Art in the United States (with John Beardsley).
Livingston’s more recent books and exhibitions include The New York School: Photographs, 1936-1963 (Stewart, Tabori & Chang); Richard Avedon: Evidence (Random House, Whitney Museum of American Art); Zelda, An Illustrated Life: The Private World of Zelda Fitzgerald (Harry N. Abrams); Hospice: A Photographic Inquiry (Bulfinch/Little Brown, Corcoran Gallery of Art); The Art of Richard Diebenkorn (Whitney Museum of American Art, University of California Press); The Paintings of Joan Mitchell (Whitney and University of California); and The Quilts of Gee’s Bend and Thornton Dial (both with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston).
Jane Livingston has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation grant, a Kress Senior Fellowship at the National Gallery of Art, a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation study center, Bellagio, the Belgian Order of the Cross, and other awards and honorary degrees.
Catalogue Staff
Arlene Allsman, Research Associate
Angie Doctor, Research Associate
Dick Grant, Project Manager
Andrea Liguori, Director of Research & Associate Editor
Jane Livingston, Project Director & Editor
Carl Schmitz, Visual Resources & Information Manager
Collaboration
University of California Press, publisher of approximately 4,000 titles currently in print including Jane Livingston's 1997 book The Art of Richard Diebenkorn, will publish the catalogue raisonné. All financial support for the catalogue raisonné comes from contributions made to a fund administered by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which is composed of the de Young and Legion of Honor museums.
Professional Memberships
The Richard Diebenkorn Catalogue Raisonné is an institutional member of College Art Association, and individuals on staff belong to Catalogue Raisonné Scholars Association, Art Libraries Society, and Visual Resources Association.
Mailing List
To be added to a low-frequency email list for announcements on art exhibitions and the catalogue's publication, please send a message to elist@diebenkorn.org.
Technical Support
To collect and manage all the information necessary for our catalogue raisonné, we use The Museum System database from Gallery Systems.
Our color management and image workflow has been developed by Prestia Color Consulting.
This website was made on a Mac with RapidWeaver. Optimized for Firefox, Safari, and IE 7.
To collect and manage all the information necessary for our catalogue raisonné, we use The Museum System database from Gallery Systems.
Our color management and image workflow has been developed by Prestia Color Consulting.
This website was made on a Mac with RapidWeaver. Optimized for Firefox, Safari, and IE 7.
