Dana Schutz was born in Livonia Michigan in 1976. She received her BFA at the Cleveland Institute Art and her MFA at Columbia University in New York City in 2002.

Schutz has had solo exhibitions at the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts; Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (2006); the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Museo d'Arte Moderna e Contemoranea di Trento e Roverto, Italy (2010); the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta; the Neuberger Museum in Purchase, New York (2011); the Miami Art Museum; the Denver Art Museum (2012); the Hepworth Wakefield Museum, Wakefield, United Kingdom (2013); and the Kestnergesellschaft in Hannover, Germany (2014), Musée d'art contemporain de Montéal (2015). She has participated in many acclaimed group exhibitions, including Clandestine, Venice Biennale, Venice (2003), Greater New York, P.S.1, New York (2005), Take Two. Worlds and Views: Contemporary Art from the Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, Art in America: Three Hundred Years of Innovation, organized by Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2007), Eclipse: Art in a Dark Age, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2008), Riotous Barogque: From Cattelan to Zurbarán Manifestations of Precarious Vitality, Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland (2012), and America is Hard to See, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015).

Dana Schutz' paintings and works on paper can be seen in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Contemporary Arts, Los Angeles; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas; The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal; Tel Aviv Museum; Israel, and The Whitney Museum of American Art, among many others. She is represented by Petzel Gallery in New York and Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin.