A native of Seattle, Jack Rasmussen earned his BA in Art from Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA, before moving to Washington, DC, and completing an MFA in Painting, MA in Arts Management, and MA and PhD in Anthropology at American University. He worked in the Education Department of the National Gallery of Art before becoming the Assistant Director of the Washington Project for the Arts when it opened in 1975. He left this position to open the Jack Rasmussen Gallery, one of the first commercial galleries to move to downtown Washington, and then helped launch Rockville Arts Place (now VisArts), served for ten years as the Executive Director of Maryland Art Place in Baltimore, and three years as Executive Director of di Rosa, a contemporary art museum and sculpture garden in Napa, California. Rasmussen has been Director and Curator of the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, DC, since it opened in 2005.