Dan Rose was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa, and has lived in Philadelphia since 1969 (with a 10-year hiatus in Vermont from 2001-2011). He holds a B.A. in Anthropology and an M.A. in Sociology from the Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a Ph.D in Anthropology from the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison. Rose joined the faculty of the Univ. of Pennsylvania in 1974. During his 24-year tenure teaching cultural anthropology and field methods, he explored concepts such as nature and culture, the incorporation of human life in market culture, and questions of human evolution and the future of humanity.

In the 1990s, Rose created over 100 one-of-a-kind artist books distributed by ICA and Serpentine Galleries in the U.K. and Printed Matter in New York City. In 2016 his entire artist book archive was gifted to the Kislak Center for Rare Books and Manuscripts at the Univ. of Pennsylvania at the completion of his solo show, Arbitrary Pleasures. Since 1995, a relentless desire to create has produced collaborations with New York City musicians Melissa Grey and David Morneau, photographic experiments with Rachel Cheetham-Richard, and a Philadelphia studio bursting with mixed-media, multi-dimensional explorations.  

The human body and face across time and space are Rose’s fascination and making things is his compulsion. HIs current thinking and visualization is about the fusion of all branches of Homo sapiens sapiens and AI-based, Robo sapiens sapiens.