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Arthur Coleman Danto (b. 1924) is an American art critic, and professor of philosophy. He was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1924, and grew up in Detroit. After spending two years in the Army, Danto studied art and history at Wayne University (now Wayne State University) and then pursued graduate study in philosophy at Columbia University. From 1949 to 1950, Danto studied in Paris on a Fulbright scholarship under Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and in 1951 returned to teach at Columbia, where he is currently Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy Emeritus.

He is best known for his work in philosophical aesthetics and philosophy of history, though he has contributed significantly to a number of fields, His interests span thought, feeling, philosophy of art, theories of representation, philosophical psychology, Hegel's aesthetics, and the philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Arthur Schopenhauer.

In art criticism, his publications include the collections Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990), which won the National Book Critics Circle Prize for Criticism in 1990; Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1992); Playing With the Edge: The Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe (University of California, 1995); and The Madonna of the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000) and Unnatural Wonders: Essays from the Gap Between Art and Life.

An art critic for The Nation, he has also published numerous articles in other journals. In addition, he is an editor of the Journal of Philosophy and a contributing editor of the Naked Punch Review and Artforum.

Danto is also the author of numerous non-art books, including Nietzsche as Philosopher, Mysticism and Morality, Narration and Knowledge, Connections to the World: The Basic Concepts of Philosophy.

He has been the recipient of many fellowships and grants including two Guggenheim Fellowships, ACLS, and Fulbright, and has served as Vice-President and President of the American Philosophical Association, as well as President of the American Society for Aesthetics.

• Audio Interview by Alan Saunders of ABC Radio National on the topic "Is it art?" -what objects/setups can be called art and what such categorization teaches us.