Born in New York, USA, in 1969. Donovan graduated from Corcoran School of the Arts & Design (Washington, D.C.) in 1991 and received an MFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond) in 1999. She approaches a wide range of everyday materials, accumulating and densifying them or drastically deviating from their original uses to achieve visual phenomena entirely detached from any preconceived notions associated with those materials. Without imposing exaggerated processing or transformations on the materials or products themselves, Donovan amplifies the inherent properties through her practice, confronting viewers with unknown phenomena and often unimaginable from the materials alone. Donovan’s major solo exhibitions include Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C., 1999), Hammer Museum (University of California, Los Angeles, 2004), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 2007), Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2018), and the Transamerica Pyramid Center (organized by Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco, 2026). She has also participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2000) and the 12th Gwangju Biennale (South Korea, 2018), as well as exhibitions at major museums worldwide. Donovan was selected as the recipient of the Calder Foundation's first Calder Prize in 2005 and received the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award in 2008. Her works are held in the collections of major institutions such as the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and Kunsthalle Praha.