Carol Becker is Professor of the Arts and Dean Emerita of Columbia University School of the Arts.
Her writing includes several books of essays about art and society: The Subversive Imagination: Artists, Society, and Social Responsibility; Zones of Contention: Essays on Art, Institutions, Gender, and Anxiety; Surpassing the Spectacle: Global Transformations and the Changing Politics of Art; Thinking in Place: Art, Action, and Cultural Production. Other books include The Invisible Drama: Women and the Anxiety of Change and two recent memoirs, Losing Helen and George’s Daughter.
Her third memoir/essay (in process) entitled: A Time of Radical Imagining: California 1968-1978 will be published by Routledge in 2026. It will focus on her time in California during a decade of revelatory ideas and actions that continue to transform the world
Before arriving at Columbia University, she was Professor of Liberal Arts, Dean of Faculty and Executive Vice-President at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Becker received her PhD in English and American Literature from the University of California, San Diego. Her writing, talks, reviews, catalogue essays, interviews, and conversations with artists and others, can be found at caroldbecker.com, as can her affiliations with other cultural institutions.
Her writing includes several books of essays about art and society: The Subversive Imagination: Artists, Society, and Social Responsibility; Zones of Contention: Essays on Art, Institutions, Gender, and Anxiety; Surpassing the Spectacle: Global Transformations and the Changing Politics of Art; Thinking in Place: Art, Action, and Cultural Production. Other books include The Invisible Drama: Women and the Anxiety of Change and two recent memoirs, Losing Helen and George’s Daughter.
Her third memoir/essay (in process) entitled: A Time of Radical Imagining: California 1968-1978 will be published by Routledge in 2026. It will focus on her time in California during a decade of revelatory ideas and actions that continue to transform the world
Before arriving at Columbia University, she was Professor of Liberal Arts, Dean of Faculty and Executive Vice-President at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Becker received her PhD in English and American Literature from the University of California, San Diego. Her writing, talks, reviews, catalogue essays, interviews, and conversations with artists and others, can be found at caroldbecker.com, as can her affiliations with other cultural institutions.