Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1946, Catherine Murphy studied at the Pratt Art Institute in Brooklyn and at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She was awarded an honorary doctorate by Pratt in 2006. She had her first solo gallery exhibition in 1972 and her first museum show in 1976. Murphy has received numerous grants and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1979 and 1989, the Academy Award in Art, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1990, and the Skowhegan Medal for Painting in 2009. She became a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 2002. Prior to joining the faculty at Rutgers University, Catherine Murphy was a senior critic in painting at Yale from 1989 to 2011. Her most recent solo exhibitions have been featured at the Weatherspoon Museum in Greensboro, NC (2012) and the Peter Freeman Gallery in NYC (2013).  In addition, Catherine Murphy has been included in the following recent museum exhibitions: The Quick and the Dead at the Walker Art Center (2009); Artist’s Choice: Vik Muniz, Rebus at The Museum of Modern Art (2008–09); Here’s the Thing: The Single Object Still Life at the KatonahMuseum (2008); and All the More Real: Portrayals of Intimacy and Empathy at The Parrish Art Museum (2007).

Her works are in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago; Cranbrook Art Museum; The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Maxine & Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art; the Frye Art Museum; the Georgia Museum of Art; the Greenville County Museum of Art; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art; The Newark Museum; the New Jersey State Museum; The New York Public Library; The Phillips Collection; the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the University of Michigan.