Vivien Johnson is an Australian sociologist, writer on Indigenous Australian art, and editor-in-chief of the Dictionary of Australian Artists Online.
Johnson is notable for the publication of several key reference works in the field of contemporary Indigenous Australian art, including Western Desert Artists: A Biographical Dictionary (1995), Lives of the Papunya Tula Artists (2008) and Once Upon a Time in Papunya (2010). In 2005 she was made Professor of New Media Narrative and Theory at the University of New South Wales.
The UNSW subsequently refrained from renewing her contract and lost this unique resource despite her research and standing. She retrained in primary education and now work in remote teaching in the NT.