Frank Van Deren Coke studied history and art history at the University of Kentucky and photography in New York with Nicholas Haz and the Clarence H. White School of Photography before entering the Navy in 1942. He received a Master’s degree in art history and a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture from Indiana University in 1958, and later worked toward Doctorate in art history at Harvard University.
Van Deren Coke began his career as a photographer in 1936, and in 1940, had his first solo exhibition at the University of Kentucky. He went on to study with Ansel Adams in the early 1950s. He served as an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida in 1950, Associate Professor at Arizona State University in 1961 and Professor of Art, Chairman of the Department of Art, and Director of the Art Museum at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He remained there until 1979, with an intervening stint as Deputy Director of the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House in Rochester.