Dore Ashton was born Dorothea Shapiro in Newark, New Jersey on May 21, 1928. She received a bachelor's degree in literature from the University of Wisconsin in 1949 and a master's degree in art history from Harvard University in 1950. After leaving Harvard, she began writing reviews for Art Digest and soon became an associate editor. In 1955, she became an art reviewer for The New York Times. She left the newspaper in November 1960. She taught art history at the School of Visual Arts, Cooper Union and the New School.
She wrote numerous books during her lifetime including The Unknown Shore: A View of Contemporary Art, A Reading of Modern Art, The New York School: A Cultural Reckoning, A Joseph Cornell Album, "Yes, but ¿: A Critical Study of Philip Guston, A Fable of Modern Art, American Art Since 1945, About Rothko, and Noguchi East and West. Many of her essays were collected in Out of the Whirlwind: Three Decades of Arts Commentary. In 1963, the College Art Association gave her and the architecture critic Lewis Mumford the first Frank Jewett Mather Awards for distinguished arts journalism. She died on January 30, 2017 at the age of 88.
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