Rose Austin is a visual artist and educator. She studied ceramics at the Brooklyn Museum and Greenwich House Pottery, printmaking and painting at the Parsons School of Design, color theory with painter John Day and ceramics with Susan Tunic, Ken Little and Rudy Audio. She studied photography with Vern Cheek and Susan Ressler.

She received a B.F.A. from the University of Montana at Missoula and an M.A. in Fine Arts from Purdue University.

Rose developed cultural policy and support for the arts at the Indiana Arts Commission and as executive director of the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC). At the MCC she initiated the Commonwealth Awards recognizing luminaries in the arts, humanities and interpretive sciences, the cultural facilities fund, programs supporting cultural economic development and artist presentations. She has served as a board member of the New England Foundation for the Arts, and the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University. She has been a review panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, a juror for arts programs and consultant to several foundations including Light Boston, the Parker Foundation and the Clay Mathematics Institute. Rose taught at Boston University from 1999 to 2020.