Sharon Louden

Sharon Louden wears many interchangeable hats: artist, educator, advocate, consultant, community builder, founder and director of the Institute for Sustained Creativity, and editor of the Living and Sustaining a Creative Life series of books. As a changemaker, Louden amplifies creative voices and advances meaningful opportunities for artists — particularly those who are underserved and underseen — across all disciplines to help them sustain their creative lives.

With decades of experience across sectors, Louden is a visionary leader and connector who bridges communities and catalyzes change. She is a skilled collaborator, convening siloed stakeholders from the nonprofit and business sectors to generate dialogue and drive collective progress. At its core, all of her work is rooted in her active creative practice as a working artist.

Artistic Practice and Career

As an artist, her work has evolved from using writing as a medium, to figuration then abstraction through her paintings and drawings, to creating many physical environments that involve an inclusive advocacy using a varied range of media.

Sharon graduated with a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Yale University School of Art. Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues including the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the Drawing Center, Carnegie Mellon University, Weisman Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, Weatherspoon Art Museum and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.

Louden's work is held in major public and private collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, National Gallery of Art, Neuberger Museum of Art, Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Yale University Art Gallery, Weatherspoon Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others. Recent additions to museum collections include a painting from the “Community” series, acquired by the National Gallery of Art in 2013 and shown in a group exhibition in 2024, entitled The Interior Life: Recent Acquisitions; a drawing by the Henry Art Gallery at University of Washington in Seattle, WA, and three drawings by the University of Wyoming Art Museum in Laramie, WY.

Her work has also been written about in the New York Times, Art in America, Washington Post, Sculpture Magazine, ARTnews and the Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as other publications. She has participated in residencies at Tamarind Institute, Urban Glass, Franconia Sculpture Park, Society of the Four Arts and Art Omi. 

In addition, she continues to produce site-specific permanent public and private commissions across the country, including recent permanent installations made in New York City, Miami, Oklahoma City, San Francisco and Washington, DC.

Sharon’s most recent exhibitions included a solo show at Tracey Morgan Gallery in Asheville, NC (2025), and a major commission for the Museum of Art and Design at the Freedom Tower in Miami, which officially opened in November, 2025. Windows of Freedom Tower is on permanent display.

From 2017-2018, Louden was the recipient of the The Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program award of a yearlong rent-free studio space in DUMBO, Brooklyn. She shared her studio through the year by welcoming other artists to come in and draw with her as well as created her first collaborative installation with fellow artist, writer and curator, Hrag Vartanian.  

Living and Sustaining a Creative Life books and Conversation Tours

She is the editor of Living and Sustaining a Creative Life: Essays by 40 Working Artists published by Intellect Books and distributed by the University of Chicago Press. 

Published in October, 2013, Living and Sustaining a Creative Life is in its 7th printing. With sales in over 24 countries, it became Intellect Book's #1 best selling publication. The book has been translated into Korean and continues to be the subject of numerous podcasts, panel discussions, conversations, reviews and radio appearances. It is now in its 7th printing.

From 2013 until 2015, Louden went on a 62-stop book tour, where she met thousands of artists from all over the US. Louden continued this momentum bringing her second book, The Artist as Culture Producer: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life, on an extensive 102-stop conversation/book tour which launched at the Strand Book Store in New York City in 2017 and concluded in Nottingham, UK in 2018. This book is now in its second printing, also sold in 24 countries, and adopted in many schools and libraries all over the world.

The Ford Foundation endorsed the The Artist as Culture Producer Conversation Tour with fiscal support for events that cross-pollinated book contributors with local artists in communities who wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to participate.

Over the course of five years, the two conversation tours made a combined total of 164 stops, engaging with more than 12,000 people in open town-hall forums. These gatherings focused on asking artists about their needs and desires, then using that information to develop pragmatic solutions that help sustain their creative lives. Many of the responses are shared on the LiveSustain.org website.

Sharon Louden and artist Jennifer Dalton collaborated and created an exhibition centered around the many voices of artists expressing their needs and wants on the tours at the Berea Arts Council hosted by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation in 2018.

Sharon’s highly anticipated third book, Last Artist Standing: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life over 50, was published in May 2025. The book anchors Sharon’s third conversation tour, which began in September 2025 and features events and public forums focused on dialogue, longevity, and creative sustainability. The tour will continue through 2027. In addition, Louden serves as Senior Editor of a 10-book series launched in 2022 with Storytellers of Art Histories. The second volume, Artists as Writers, was published in February 2025.

Public Speaking

In 2025, Louden was the closing presenter at the Southern Curators Summit in Lake City, SC, and will be the Keynote Speaker in April 2026 at the Symposium of Women in the Arts at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, TN.

In 2019, Louden was the Keynote Speaker for the SECAC Conference in Chattanooga, TN and in 2021, the moderator of the Keynote Panel of the National Council of Arts Administrators Conference in Sarasota, FL. In 2022, Sharon gave the Keynote speech for the 2022 SculptureX Symposium and in 2023, she addressed District Creative Leaders at the Colorado Creative Industries Summit in Crested Butte, Colorado.

Sharon continues to tour the country to visit and work with students, faculty and administrators at academic institutions both virtually and in-person such as Ball State University, Boise State University, Syracuse University, Ringling College of Art and Design, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia College Chicago, Florida International University, New World School of the Arts Miami Dade College and many more.

Selected Nonprofit Professional Experience

From September 2018 to December 2022, Sharon held the position of the Artistic Director of the Chautauqua Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institution. Since its inception in 1909, the Chautauqua Visual Arts (CVA) has been a cornerstone of sharing culture nationally through its thought leaders and mentorship. Mirroring the mission of Chautauqua Institution, Sharon was charged to grow CVA into more of a diverse, intergenerational community on a national stage, leading from empathy and compassion; diverse, equitable, accessible and inclusive.

Sharon Louden is the Founder and Director of the Institute for Sustained Creativity while also continuing her artistic practice, teaching MFA students at the School of Visual Arts and working with many nonprofit organizations, academic institutions and individual artists around the world.

Louden is also active on Boards and committees of various not-for-profit art organizations and volunteers her time to artists to further their careers. Sharon was a consultant for Creative Capital and is an active consultant with grantees of the Joan Mitchell Foundation with professional guidance and development. She is also currently a Board Member of the Jentel Artist Residency, Foundwork and the Audrey Flack Foundation.

Teaching & Lecture Series

As a part of sustaining her creative life as a practicing, working artist, Sharon has had an entrepreneurial teaching and administrative history since 1991. Her teaching experience includes studio and professional practice classes to students of all levels in many institutions throughout the United States. Colleges and universities at which she has lectured and taught include: Moore College of Art, Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Kansas City Art Institute, College of Saint Rose, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Vanderbilt University, New York Academy of Art and Maryland Institute College of Art. Sharon’s administrative experience dates back to 1988 when she was the Registrar in non-degree programs at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has consistently assisted through committees and advisory boards contributing to academic and nonprofit institutions.

Sharon has served as a mentor faculty member in the MFA Fine Arts program at the School of Visual Arts since 2017. Along side her work in colleges and universities, she continues to lead grassroots Glowtown workshops in schools and not-for-profit organizations across the country. More recently, she has begun a series of lectures and workshops centered on how artists think, geared toward medical professionals.

Louden organized a popular Lecture Series between 2009-2019 at the New York Academy of Art, interviewing luminaries and exceptional individuals in the art world and from afar. You can find many of her conversations during her lecture series here. She continued this lecture series at the Chautauqua Institution: Chautauqua Visual Arts Lecture Series, which took place weekly for 9 weeks during the Chautauqua Institution summer season.

Sharon lives in Queens and works in the Bronx, NY. For more information about Sharon’s books please visit livesustain.org and the University of Chicago Press website. A dedicated website for the The Institute for Sustained Creativity will be launching soon.

This page was last updated February, 2026.