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 now works as an independent curator.

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. Livingston had been on sabbatical, writing a book under a Guggenheim Fellowship when the show was cancelled ; when she returned, she made it clear that she would not have cancelled the show. Livingston had arranged the show which was financed in part by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

She is known for organizing a major museum exhibition of Chicano art, and, together with Marcia Tucker, the first major museum exhibition of Bruce Nauman. Other exhibitions include her show of National Geographic, "illustrative" photography; she and curator John Beardsley, also curated an exhibition of black outsider artists in 1982. This show "marked an explosion of interest in the work of African American artists." Livingston curated a show of John Alexander's works at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2008.

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.

• 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.: Cocoran Gallery of Art. OCLC 563138463.
• Livingston, Jane; Krauss, Rosalind E.; Ades, 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, California: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520235687.