Jane Livingston is an American art historian, writer and curator. She has organized exhibitions of many notable artists, including Bruce Nauman, Richard Diebenkorn and Joan Mitchell. Livingston
She has been a consultant and advisor to the National Endowment for the Arts, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Friends of Photography, Artists Space, and the American Arts Alliance.
Jane Livingston was raised in Southern California. She studied art at Pomona College, and later went on to earn an M.A. in art history from Harvard.
Professional
From 1967-1975, Livingston was the curator of 20th Century Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). There she co-curated the first major exhibition by artist Bruce Nauman (together with curator Marcia Tucker). It was also at LACMA that Livingston became acquainted with painter Richard Diebenkorn.
Livingston left LACMA in 1975 to become the Chief Curator and Associate Director at the Corocoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., a post she would hold until 1989 when she resigned following the much-publicized cancellation of a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition that Livingston had arranged.
In 1989, the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition that Livingston had arranged to be shown at the Corcoran was cancelled. The museum said the reason was concerns about indecency. The NEA was a major funding organization. This happened at the same time that artists such as Karen Finley, were losing their funding due to social concerns. Shortly thereafter, Livingston resigned from her post as curator and associate director, though she maintained at the time the show's cancellation was not a reason for her leaving.