Susan E. Cahan is an art historian, curator and educator who specializes in contemporary art and the history of museums. Her research focuses on the relationship between social and artistic change and the confluence of factors that shape the way culture is imagined, discussed and advanced.

Cahan is Dean and Professor of Art History at Temple University Tyler School of Art and Architecture. Cahan previously served as dean for the arts at Yale College from 2009–2017. Her broad range of experience also includes teaching at Bard College, UCLA, and the University of Missouri-St. Louis, as well as curatorial work and oversight of education programs at both the New Museum (as deputy director) and the Museum of Modern Art (as school programs coordinator). Prior to her transition to full-time teaching, she was senior curator for the art collection of Eileen and Peter Norton and director of arts programs at the Peter Norton Family Foundation in Santa Monica, California. She has written on the social roles of art and the history of museums, serving as editor of Contemporary Art and Multicultural Education (Routledge, 1996) with Zoya Kocur.