Jane McFadden

Dean, Division of Interdisciplinary Studies

Jane McFadden is the dean of the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies and former chair of ArtCenter’s Humanities and Sciences Department. As a full-time faculty member, she has taught a variety of cultural history courses across departments from undergraduate Fine Art to graduate Industrial Design. She was the director of the Graduate Studies Criticism and Theory program from 2007-2009.

“Our rigor derives from the diverse expertise and inspiring dedication of our faculty and, in turn, the excellence they expect from students,” says McFadden. “The various programs of the division offer ways for our students to come together across departments and methodologies. We thrive on collaborative ways of thinking and learning.”

As an art historian, McFadden’s work focuses on the interdisciplinary practices of the late twentieth century, with an emphasis on feminism, media, and site-related concerns. She has written for various publications devoted to modern and contemporary art, such as Art Journal, Artforum, Grey Room, Modern Painters, X-tra, The Brooklyn Rail, and Ursula. She is author of essays for Pacific Standard Time at the J. Paul Getty Museum and Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Her book Walter de Maria: Meaningless Work, for which she was awarded a Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, was published by Reaktion Books in 2016. Her forthcoming book, Life on Earth: Art and Ecofeminism (with Catherine Taft) will be published by Inventory Press in 2026.

McFadden has lectured widely in a variety of venues, including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, the Dia Foundation for the Arts, New York, the Métamatic Research Initiative, Basel, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2010, she was a guest scholar at the Getty Research Institute and served on the advisory board for Pacific Standard Time. She has served on editorial board for Art Journal, and the advisory board of the Center for Art and Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art. She received her PhD in art history in 2004 from the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin.