Diana Ketcham is a critic and essayist who writes on architecture, historic landscapes, and literature. She is retired from her role as senior editor at Arion Press. She was the co-founder and director of the nonprofit Grabhorn Institute, located in the Presidio in San Francisco.
She received a Ph. D. from the University of California at Berkeley and is a Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin. Her writing has been supported by a Fulbright Fellowship, by the Rockefeller Foundation, and by the Graham Foundation for the Fine Arts.
Her most recent book is on Herzog & de Meuron, The de Young in the 21st Century: a Museum by Herzog & de Meuron (Thames and Hudson 2005). Her essays appear in the New York Times, The Nation, the New Republic, and ARTnews and have won awards including the Manufacturers Hanover Distinguished Newspaper Criticism Award.
Her book on the rediscovery of a historic landscape garden, The Desert de Retz: An Eighteenth Century French Folly Garden (MIT Press 1994) received the American Institute of Architects International Book Award. She has taught at the University of California, the University of Paris and the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Dr. Ketcham was the Book Editor and Architecture Critic of the Oakland Tribune and serves as a consultant to government agencies and architecture firms on such projects the United States Embassy in Berlin, the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, and the San Francisco TransBay terminal.