Dona Nelson moved to New York City in 1967 to participate in the Whitney Independent Study Program. She received her BFA from Ohio State University in 1968.

She has participated in the 2014 Whitney Biennial and in group shows at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Rose Art Museum, Contemporary Art Museum Houston and South Florida, Boston University Art Gallery, New York University 80WSE, CCS Bard, MIT List Visual Art Center, Apexart, Milwaukee Art Museum, P.S. 1, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, and Guggenheim. Nelson has received many grants and awards including an Anonymous Was A Woman Grant in 2015, an Artist Legacy Foundation Award in 2013, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award in 2011, and a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1994.

Espace Tajan exhibited Nelson’s paintings in Paris in the fall of 2019, adding to a long list of widely reviewed solo shows at galleries such as Michael Benevento Los Angeles, Locks Gallery Philadelphia, Cheim & Read, Michael Klein, and Rosa Esman (all New York); including a mid-career solo exhibition at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC, which was accompanied by a full color catalogue. Her paintings have been included in group shows at Thaddaeus Ropac, London, Morán Morán, Los Angeles, Ceysson & Bénétière, Luxembourg, as well as Deitch Projects, Lisson Gallery, Robert Miller, Mary Boone, Canada Gallery and d’Amelio Terras (all New York). Nelson’s work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Rose Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Perez Art Museum, Kadist Foundation, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Albright-Knox, Whitney Museum of American Art, The Carnegie Museum of Art, ICA Miami, The Museum of Nebraska Art, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, Des Moines Art Center, Pompidou Paris, Shah Garg Foundation, Madison Scranton Memorial Library Connecticut, Bromley Companies Collection Tampa, and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia. Nelson’s work is additionally a part of Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and Never Done: 100 Years of Women in Politics and Beyond at the Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY. Her work is included in 52 Womxm Artists: Revisiting a Feminist Milestone at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, CT. In the Premiere Sector of Art Basel Basel her work can be seen in a two-person project with Andrew Ross in June 2026.