Claudia DeMonte was born and raised in Astoria, New York City. She has more than 60 one-person shows and 300 group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at the Corcoran Museum, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Mississippi Museum, Tucson Museum, Flint Institute of Art, Museum of the Southwest, and others.

Her work is in numerous museum permanent collections, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Stamford Museum and Nature Center, and the Boca Raton Museum of Art. Her public commissions have come from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Brooklyn Library System, Queens Supreme Court, the State of New Mexico, and New York City School Construction Authority.

DeMonte is also the curator of "Women of the World: A Global Collection of Art." This traveling exhibition, with accompanying books, includes works by women from 177 countries dealing with the images of women.

DeMonte's work is heavily influenced by her travels to over 80 countries, her interest in the roles of women in contemporary society and Outsider Art, a collection compiled with her husband, artist Ed McGowin.

For 33 years, DeMonte has served on the faculty of the University of Maryland, where she was named Distinguished Scholar Teacher and Professor Emerita. In 2006, She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the College of Santa Fe.

DeMonte presently lives with her husband in New York City and Kent, Connecticut.

American, Born 1947

Claudia DeMonte was born and raised in Queens, New York. She received her BA in Art History from the College of Notre Dame, Maryland, and her MFA from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. She attributes the form of her work – her subject matter and the materials she uses – in part to her contact with 1970s feminism. "It looks that you just see this bright, colorful stuff, but to me there are all kinds of other connections and the feminist one is a big one," she said in 1991. "I wouldn't be where I was, I wouldn't be in this job if it wasn't for the women's movement. I came along at the time when we were in college and this whole thing hit and it was a huge help to me." Outsider art, folk art, children's art, and constant travel are some of the "other connections" she cites. "There's something so pure about that untrained eye that don't do things wrong," she said in the same interview. Her work has been exhibited in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, with shows at the Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona; Queens Museum, New York; Contemporary Arts Museum Huston, Texas; Gerduberg Cultural Center, Rekjavik, Iceland; and Silpakorn University, Bangkok, Thailand.