Karen Hearn FSA is a British art historian and curator. She has Master's degrees from the University of Cambridge and the University of London.^[1] She is an Honorary Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University College London.^[2] From 1992 to 2012 Hearn was the Curator of 16th & 17th Century British Art at the Tate where she curated major exhibitions on Tudor and Jacobean paintings, Anthony van Dyck, and Rubens. She was co-curator of Royalist Refugees at The Rubenshuis in Antwerp. She has also curated recent exhibitions at The National Portrait Gallery in London, The Harley Gallery, and The Foundling Museum.^[3] She was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 1 January 2005.^[1]

She researches, writes, teaches, lectures and broadcasts on art produced in Britain between about 1500 and about 1710, and in particular on the numerous Netherlandish-British artistic and cross-cultural links of that period. One long-standing focus is the life and work of the 17th-century portrait-painter Cornelius Johnson, (Cornelis Jonson van Ceulen). She is currently working on a full-scale Johnson monograph.^{[citation needed]}

Hearn also writes on the British career of Anthony van Dyck. In 2009 she curated the major Tate Britain exhibition ‘Van Dyck & Britain’, and has subsequently published a key essay on his London studio/workshop (2018).^{[citation needed]}

For many years she has taught at university level on the centrality of migrant artists to 16th- and 17th-century (Tudor and Stuart period) British art.^{[citation needed]}

• 1995. Karen Hearn ed., Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530-1630 (London: Tate, 1995).
• 1998. "Henry Gibbs: Painter and Gentleman", Burlington Magazine (February 1998), 99-101.
• 2004. "Merchant Patrons for the Painter Siberechts", in Galinou, Mireille (ed) City Merchants and the Arts 1670-1720. Wetherby.
• 2004. 'A question of Judgement: Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford as Art Patron & Collector' in Edward Chaney ed., Evolution of English Collecting (Yale, 2004).
• 2005. Nathaniel Bacon: Artist, Gentleman, Gardener. London, Tate Publishing.
• 2009. "Lady Anne Clifford's "Great Triptych"", in Hearn, K. and Hulse, L. (eds) Lady Anne Clifford: Culture, Patronage and Gender in Seventeenth-Century Britain. Leeds. 1-24.
• 2009. Karen Hearn ed., Van Dyck & Britain (London: Tate, 2009).
• 2015. "'Picture-drawer, born at Antwerp': Migrant Artists in Jacobean London", in Painting in Britain 1500-1630: Production, Influences & Patronage. London, British Academy. 278-287.
• 2015. Cornelius Johnson (London, Paul Holberton: 2015)
• 2019. "'Wrought with flowers and leaves': Embroidery Depicted in Late Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century British Portraits – the Era of Rubens", in Lieneke Nijkamp & Abigail D. Newman (eds) Undressing Rubens: Fashion and Painting in Seventeenth-Century Antwerp. London & Turnhout. 31-46.
• 2020. Portraying Pregnancy: From Holbein to Social Media (London, Paul Holberton: 2020).