After completing her PhD at the University of California, Los Angeles, Karen Lang joined the Art History Department at the University of Southern California, where she was promoted to Associate Professor (with tenure). On moving to the UK in 2011 she continued her career as a Reader in modern and contemporary art at the University of Warwick, where she was promoted to Professor. Since 2019 she has had a career as an independent art historian, publishing and also curating the exhibition Philip Guston: Locating the Image for the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford.

She served as Deputy Director of the Scientific Advisory Board to the international research group Bilderfahrzeuge: Warburg’s Legacy and the Future of Iconography, a project involving the Warburg Institute, London, and Institutes for Art History in Germany, Italy and France.
Karen is also known for her work as an editor, from the memorable features she created while Editor-in-Chief of The Art Bulletin to Field Notes on the Visual Arts: Seventy-Five Short Essays, to her role as a founding editor of the international open-access journal 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual – Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und visuellen Kultur.  

She is fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.