• Sharp, Jane Ashton
  • Position: Professor
  • Research Interests: Twentieth Century Art, Russian and Soviet Art, Soviet Nonconformist Art
  • Ph.D. Yale University
  • Phone: 732-932-6772
  • Office Hours: Thursdays, 2:00-4:00 via zoom or by appointment. Please e-mail to schedule a meeting time.
  • Office Location: Zimmerli Art Museum

Biographical Information:

Dr. Sharp is a Professor in the Department of Art History and acts as Research Curator of the Dodge Collection at the Zimmerli Art Museum. In addition to teaching she has engaged students in curating and writing for exhibitions that explored abstract painting and Moscow conceptualist art in the Dodge Collection. While at Rutgers she has curated over ten exhibitions drawing from the Dodge Collection and recently curated the reinstallation of the Dodge Collection (2012). She is currently engaged in research for a book on abstract painting in Russia during and after the Thaw (1956-1991).

Her book, Russian Modernism Between East and West: Natalia Goncharova and the Moscow Avant-Garde, 1905-1914.  (Cambridge University Press, 2006) was awarded the Robert Motherwell Prize from the Dedalus Foundation.

Dr. Sharp has served as editor of the Zimmerli Journal, volumes 1, and 5 (2008, 2003), part 1 (Soviet Nonconformist and Russian Art). She has published extensively on the prerevolutionary Russian avant-garde, and Soviet unofficial art (see attached C.V.).

Books:

Russian Modernism between East and West: Natal’ia Goncharova and the Moscow Avant-Garde, 1905-1914. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Awarded the Robert Motherwell Prize by the Dedalus Foundation, 2007.

Select Publications:

“Stsenicheskii dizain, ornament I svoeobrazie kopii v iskusstve Natalii Goncharovoi.” Nataliia Goncharova. Mezhdu Vostokom I Zapadom. I.A. Vakar, ed. Exhibition Catalogue. Moscow: State Tretiakov Gallery, 2013, 64-75.

Jane Sharp

 “The Revolutionary Art of Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov.” The Russian Avant-Garde and Radical Modernism: An Introductory Reader (Cultural Syllabus). Dennis G. Ioffe & Frederick H. White, eds. Brighton MA: Academic Studies Press, 2012.

“Natalia Gontcharova, Michel Larionov et les limites du cubisme.” Marc Chagall et l’avant-garde russe. Exhibition Catalogue, Angela Lampe, ed. Paris: Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, 2011, 74-79.

“Inside the Gap: Art of the Georgian Diaspora (New York, London, Düsseldorf).”  Born in Georgia. Exhibition Catalogue, Jan Hein Sassen, ed. The Cobra Museum, Amsterdam, 2009, 17-27.

 “Makarevich/Elagina and New Histories of Russian Modernism.” Makarevich and Elagina: Mushrooms of the Avant-Garde. Nadim Julien Samman, ed. London: [Art]iculate Art Fund, 2008, 25-31.

Long List of Publications

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 Current Interests & Research:

Critical debates in Soviet art after 1953
Conceptual art in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
Russian avant-gardes before and after the 1917 revolutions
Art in the postwar Soviet Period
Late 20th-century abstract painting in the former Soviet Union

Undergraduate Classes Taught:

Russian Avant-Gardes of the Twentieth Century
Dissidence and "nonconformist" strategies in Soviet Art
Soviet Art, Nonconformist and Other
Modernism between East and West: Central and East-European Art 1900-1990
Globalization and Modernist Art
Art in the One Party State (Russia, Germany, Italy and China)
Sculpture "in the Expanded Field"
Conceptual Art
20th Century Art of the Soviet Republics

Graduate Classes Taught:

Theories of the Avant-Garde
Utopias and Realities: The Social Uses of Art in Central and Eastern Europe
Cubisms/Futurisms
Primitivism and Difference
Abstract Painting "Once Removed"
Orientalism
Approaches to the History of Art
Global Conceptualisms

  • Short Bio: Jane Sharp is a Professor in the Department of Art History, at Rutgers where she also acts as Research Curator of the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union, at the Zimmerli Art Museum. She teaches 20th and 21st century European art (including Central and Eastern European), as well as Soviet unofficial art. Her research focuses on the historical Russian avant-garde and Soviet era unofficial art. Her book, Russian Modernism between East and West: Natal’ia Goncharova and the Moscow Avant-Garde, 1905-14 (Cambridge University Press, 2006) won the 2007 Robert Motherwell Prize from the Dedalus Art Foundation. Since arriving at Rutgers in 1999, she has curated over 12 exhibitions at the Zimmerli, accompanied by a variety of publications on Soviet unofficial art. She recently published Thinking Pictures: The Visual Field of Moscow Conceptualism, the catalogue for her exhibition dawn from the Dodge Collection held at the Zimmerli Art Museum (September 6-December 31, 2016). She is currently completing a book manuscript on abstract painting in Moscow during the Thaw.