Jane Panetta is a New York-based curator and art historian. Panetta is currently an Associate Curator at the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

Career

Curating

Before working at the Whitney, Panetta spent five years in the Painting and Sculpture Department of the

Museum of Modern Art, New York The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

as a curatorial assistant, where she was involved with MoMA's 2007

Richard Serra Richard Serra (born November 2, 1938) is an American artist known for his large-scale sculptures made for site-specific landscape, Urban area, urban, and Architecture, architectural settings. Serra's sculptures are notable for their material q ...

retrospective and the 2009 retrospective on the Belgian artist

James Ensor James Sidney Edouard, Baron Ensor (13 April 1860 – 19 November 1949) was a Belgian painter and printmaker, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism who lived in Ostend for most of his life. He was associated with the artistic g ...

. The Whitney Museum hired Panetta in 2010 as a Curatorial Researcher. She worked her way up to Assistant Curator followed by an appointment as Associate Curator in 2015. At the Whitney, she was part of the curatorial team that curated the 2015 show: “America Is Hard to See,” the museum's first collection show at its new home in the

Meatpacking District The Meatpacking District is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan that runs from West 14th Street south to Gansevoort Street, and from the Hudson River east to Hudson Street. The Meatpacking Business Improvement District along ...

. Also with the Whitney, Panetta organized “Fast Forward: Painting from the 1980s (2017)” and “Mirror Cells,” with Christopher Y. Lew, the co-curator of the 2017

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition ...

. She has also curated solo presentations by Willa Nasatir and

MacArthur Genius The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 ind ...

awardee

Njideka Akunyili Crosby Njideka Akunyili Crosby (born 1983) is a Nigerian-born visual artist working in Los Angeles, California. Through her art Akunyili Crosby "negotiates the cultural terrain between her adopted home in America and her native Nigeria, creating collag ...

. Panetta curated the 2019 Whitney Biennial with Rujeko Hockley. In selecting the 75 artists for the show, Panetta and Hockley selected predominantly minority, female artists who live and work on the West or East Coast of the United States, among other commonalities. When asked about their selections towards younger artists of color, the curators explained that they found other common threads in the struggles among artists today including "a sense of urgent financial and professional struggle due to college debt, real-estate development, and gentrification."

Writing and academia

Panetta contributed to a survey book on

, published by MoMa in 2009 to accompany an exhibit at the museum. In the early 2010s, Panetta wrote frequently for publications '' Art in America'' and ''

Modern Painters ''Modern Painters'' (1843–1860) is a five-volume work by the Victorian art critic, John Ruskin, begun when he was 24 years old based on material collected in Switzerland in 1842. Ruskin argues that recent painters emerging from the tradition of ...

''. Alongside her curatorial work, she is also an adjunct faculty member at

Parsons The New School for Design Parsons School of Design, known colloquially as Parsons, is a private art and design college located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhat ...

. She received a bachelor's degree in History from Haverford College and a master's degree in Art History from CUNY, Hunter College. As of 2015, Panetta was working to complete her PhD, with a focus on

modern Modern may refer to: History * Modern history ** Early Modern period ** Late Modern period *** 18th century *** 19th century *** 20th century ** Contemporary history * Moderns, a faction of Freemasonry that existed in the 18th century Phil ...

and contemporary sculpture, at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Panetta is a member of

Madison Square Park Madison Square is a public square formed by the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway at 23rd Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The square was named for Founding Father James Madison, fourth President of the United States ...

’s Public Art Consortium.

External links

Whitney Biennial 2019 - organized by Jane Panetta, associate curator, and Rujeko Hockley, assistant curatorPanetta talks to ''Cultured Magazine'' about Mirror Cells show

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Panetta, Jane Living people American art curators American women curators American art historians Women art historians People associated with the Museum of Modern Art (New York City) People associated with the Whitney Museum of American Art Year of birth missing (living people)