Linda Besemer

Linda Besemer (born 1957) is an American painter, video artist, and educator. She is known for her abstract painting, and was a professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles.^[1][2]

Linda Besemer was born in 1957, in South Bend, Indiana.^[3] She attended Indiana University Bloomington (BFA 1981), and Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University (MFA 1983).^[3]

Besemer was the James Irvine Distinguished Professor of the Arts at Occidental College in Los Angeles from 1987 until 2009.^[4][5] Additionally she taught coursework in gender theory in the women's studies and gender studies departments.^[5]

She is known for her large scale abstract paintings, many of which have sculptural properties.^[6][7] Besemer is a recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Fellowship (2011), the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, the Chuck Close Rome Prize in painting from the American Academy in Rome, and the Guggenheim Fellowship (2022).^[5] In 2025, she was elected as an academic member of the National Academy in New York City.^[5]

Besemer's artwork can be found in museum collections including at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,^[8] the Whitney Museum of American Art,^[9] the Buffalo AKG Art Museum,^[10] the Los Angeles County Museum of Art,^[11] and the Tucson Museum of Art.^[12]