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Anna Novakov is a multi-disciplinary artist, writer, designer, curator and educator. She was born in Belgrade (former Yugoslavia) in 1959 and was raised in Berkeley, California. Novakov is Professor of Art History, Theory and Practice (Emerita) at Saint Mary’s College of California as well as a former Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the San Francisco Art Institute. Since moving back to New York in 2020, she has focused on her studio practice which consists of olfactory installations, wall works and textiles.
The daughter of noted environmental physicist Tihomir Novakov, she was immersed in the Ecotopian dreams of air pollution control from an early age. She was raised in both the Socialist Utopia of post-war Yugoslavia and the free speech, counterculture movements of Berkeley, California. Both radical movements had profound influences on diaspora, migration and displacement – areas of study that would form the basis of Novakov’s creative practice. In 1992, after completing her doctorate at New York University, she came to prominence in Manhattan as one of the first art critics to write about the interrelationship between art, emerging technology and Utopian spaces.
A prolific writer, she has published numerous books, magazine articles and exhibition catalogues including Veiled Histories: The Body, Place and Public Art (1996) and Carnal Pleasures: Desire, Contemporary Art and Public Space (1998), The Artistic Legacy of Le Corbusier’s machine à habiter (2008), Essays on Womens’ Artistic and Cultural Contributions 1919-1939: Expanded Social Roles for the New Woman following the First World War (2009), Phantom Architecture: Essays on Interwar Architecture in Belgrade (2011), Play of Lines: Anton Azbe’s Art Academy and Education of East European Female Painters (2011), : Talking Points: Conversations about Art, Gender and Public Space  (2012), Diplomatic Ties: Pavle Beljanski, Patronage and Serbian Women Artists (2012), Flat Horizon: The Art and Life of Milan Konjović (2014) and Imagined Utopias in the Built Environment: From London’s Vauxhall Garden to the Black Rock Desert (2017). 
Her creative practice focuses on the transitory modalities of the olfactory and textile arts. As an artist and certified perfumer, Novakov is able to unpack events through a multisensory artistic lens by examining seemingly inconsequential things. While her creative practice focuses on conceptual perfumery and textile design she is also invested in the role of scent in the construction of personal and collective memories, fragrance as an aspect of Utopian societies and diasporic cooking as a socio-political act.