Carol Diehl

Carol Diehl is an American artist, art critic and poet.
Born in Philadelphia and raised in Chicago, Diehl attended MacMurray College in Illinois for two years, after which she married a graduate student at Yale University (since divorced) and moved to New Haven (CT). Upon returning to Chicago, she began painting and was active in the art scene that flourished in Chicago in the 1970s, exhibiting her work at a number of local galleries and writing articles and reviews for The New Art Examiner, where she became Managing Editor. Diehl moved to New York in 1976 to work as assistant to John Coplans, then editor of Artforum magazine.
Diehl lives in New York City and southwestern Massachusetts. She has two sons, Matt Diehl and Adam Diehl.

Diehl has exhibited her work at, among others, the Sidney Janis Gallery, Hirschl & Adler Modern, and Gary Snyder Fine Art with reviews in Art in America, ARTnews, New York, and The New York Times. She has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, as well as residency fellowships to the MacDowell Colony for the Arts and the Millay Colony for the Arts.

Diehl is a Contributing Editor to Art in America where she has written cover articles on Olafur Eliasson, Christian Marclay, Wolfgang Laib, and Robert Irwin, as well as numerous other features and reviews, and her writing about contemporary art has also appeared in ARTnews, Art + Auction, Art & Antiques, New York, Civilization, and Metropolis. Diehl has also written essays for numerous artist’s catalogues and books about artists.

Known for her clear, insightful and candid writing style, she is the recipient of a 2011 Arts Writers Grant from the Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation for her popular blog, Art Vent.

Diehl taught painting and writing in the Graduate Fine Art Program of the School of Visual Arts (NY) from 1996–2006 and was a member of the Core Visual Arts faculty at Bennington College (VT) from 1998-2002. She has been a visiting artist at Yale University, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, the University of Iowa, Columbia College Chicago, the Vermont Studio Center, Vermont College of Fine Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center (MA), and Senior Critic in the University of Pennsylvania Visual Arts Program.

In the early nineties Diehl was active in Downtown New York’s performance poetry scene and has read her work at the Nuyorican Poets Café, The Kitchen, and the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, among others. Her poetry is included in the anthology Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe (Henry Holt and Company), winner of the 1994 National Book Award.

• Studio Olafur Eliasson, Unspoken Spaces, Chapter 1 (with Terrence Perk), Thames & Hudson, 2016.
• Carter Wiseman, Ed. A Place for the Arts: The MacDowell Colony, 1907-2007. Essays by Joan Acocella, Michael Chabon, Carol Diehl, Verlyn Klinkenborg, Paul Moravec, Ruth Reichl, Jean Valentine, Wendy Wasserstein, Jaqueline Woodson and Kevin Young.
• Mike Glier, Lisa Corrin and Carol Diehl, Mike Glier: Along a Long Line, Hudson Hills, 2009.
• Carol Diehl, with Valerie Ann Leeds, Anita Shreve, John Sacret Young. Andrew Stevovich: Essential Elements. Lenox: Hard Press Editions, 2007.