Dore Ashton (born in 1928, Newark, New Jersey; died January 30, 2017, in New York) was a writer, professor and critic of modern and contemporary art. She was the author or editor of more than thirty books on art, including Noguchi East and West, About Rothko, American Art Since 1945, The New York School: A Cultural Reckoning and Picasso On Art. Ashton also contributed to many publications including Art Digest and worked as an art critic at the New York Times. Ashton was one of the New York art critics who championed the New York School, whose members also included Harold Rosenberg and Barbara Rose. Ashton's 1983 work on Mark Rothko, About Rothko, remains a source of much discussion about the artist. Ashton's most recent book, David Rankin: The New York Years, on artist David Rankin was released in July 2013.
Ashton received numerous awards, including Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships in 1963 and 1969, the Frank J. Mather Award for art criticism from the College Art Association in 1963 and a Ford Foundation Award in 1965. Ashton was a professor of art history at the Cooper Union in New York and a senior critic in painting and printmaking at Yale. Ashton received an M.A. from Harvard University.