Biographical Information:
A professor in the Department of Art History, at Rutgers University, Jane Sharp is also Research Curator of the Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union at the Zimmerli Art Museum where she has curated over 20 exhibitions. She has published widely on the historical avant-garde within the Russian empire and now focuses on unofficial art of the late Soviet period. Her first book, Russian Modernism between East and West: Natal’ia Goncharova and the Moscow Avant-Garde, 1905-14) won the Robert Motherwell Prize from the Dedalus Art Foundation. Thinking Pictures: The Visual Field of Moscow Conceptualism, acted as catalogue for her exhibition drawn from the Dodge Collection held at the Zimmerli Art Museum (September 6-December 31, 2016). This exhibition served as a departure point for a re-curated show held at the National Museum of Estonian Art in 2022. Dr. Sharp is currently completing a book on Thaw era abstraction in the former USSR while in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study (2025-26).
Undergraduate Classes Taught:
Art and Power: The Visual and Literary Culture of the Soviet Century
Russian and Soviet Avant-Gardes
Survey of 20th Century Art
International Avant-gardes: Modernist Art of the Machine Age
Varieties of Nonconformism
Graduate Classes Taught:
Theories of the Avant-Garde
Global Conceptualisms
Approaches to Art History (Methods)
Curatorial Training
Curatorial Exhibition Seminar
Abstraction
Orientalism
Selected Publications:
Books:
Thinking Pictures: The Visual Field of Moscow Conceptualism. Exhibition Catalogue. Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 2016
Russian Modernism between East and West: Natal’ia Goncharova and the Moscow Avant-Garde, 1905-1914. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006 (343 pp.; 174 b/w illustrations; 16 color plates). Awarded the Robert Motherwell Prize by the Dedalus Foundation, 2007
Book chapters:
“Riddle, Trap, and Lure: Ülo Sooster in Retrospect.” Chapter in Ülo Sooster. Liisa Kaljula and Elnara Taidre. Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn, 2024, 255-269.
“Inside the Picture: Moscow Conceptualism Re-viewed.” Chapter in Thinking Pictures: Conceptual Art in Moscow and the Baltics. Anu Allas, ed. Tallinn, National Museum of Estonian Art, 2022
"Action-Paradise and Readymade Reliquaries: Eccentric Histories of Russian Art.” Book chapter in Byzantium and Modernism. Maria Taroutina and Roland Bettancourt, eds. Leiden: Brill Press, 2015
“The Personal Visions and Public Spaces of the Movement Group (Dvizhenie).” Cold War Modern. David Crowley and Jane Pavitt, eds. Exhibition catalogue. The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2008, 234-41.
Edited volumes:
Irina Nakhova: Museum on the Edge. Co-editor, Julia Tulovsky. Exhibition Catalogue. Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press 2019 (87 pages, 30 color plates)
The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-32. Co-editor, Michael Govan. Exhibition Catalogue. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1992.
Edited issues:
Zimmerli Journal, Vol. 5 (December 2007-08; published November 2010). 132 pp.
Zimmerli Journal, Vol. 1, Part 1 (September 2003). 80 pp.
Selected fellowships, awards and distinctions:
2025-26 Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
2013-14 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, NC
2007 The Dedalus Foundation: The Robert Motherwell Award for a book on modernism for Russian Modernism Between East and West (Cambridge University Press)
Curated exhibitions:
November 2024-September 2025 -- Painting to Scale (Zimmerli Art Museum)
April-August 2022 --Thinking Pictures: Conceptual Art from Moscow and the Baltics, co-curated with Anu Allas and Liisa Kaljula: National Museum of Estonian Art (KUMU), Tallinn
2016 (Fall-Winter 2017) Thinking Pictures: Moscow Conceptual Art in the Dodge Collection (Zimmerli Art Museum)
2006 (Spring) In and Around Dvizhenie–The Movement Group (Zimmerli Art Museum)
2004 (Fall) Allusive Form: Painting as an Idea (Zimmerli Art Museum)
Selected professional activities:
Curating; lecturing; translating