Dora Jane Janson, née Heineberg (1916-2002) was an American art historian, who collaborated with her husband

Horst W. Janson Horst Woldemar Janson (October 4, 1913 – September 30, 1982), was a Russian Empire-born German-American professor of art history best known for his ''History of Art'', which was first published in 1962 and has since sold more than four million c ...

.Janson, Dora Jane
in Lee Sorenson, ed., ''

Dictionary of Art Historians The ''Dictionary of Art Historians'' (DAH) is an online encyclopedia of topics relating to art historians, art critics and their dictionaries. The mission of the project is to provide free, reliable, English-language information on published art ...

''. Accessed 9 February 2020.

Life

Dora Jane Heineberg was born in Philadelphia. She studied art history at

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

, where she met Horst W. Janson, an émigré graduate student at Harvard University. The couple married after he had gained his PhD in 1941. Janson "never denied that she consciously sacrificed her career to raise children". She helped her husband with his 1952 monograph ''Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance'', providing an "exemplary index".'Notes on Publications', ''Renaissance News'', Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring 1952). She also collaborated as co-author with her husband on ''The Story of Painting for Young People'' (1954) and ''History of Art'' (1962). ''History of Art'' entirely excluded women painters. Dora Janson's ''From slave to siren'' (1971), an extensive catalog of a

Duke University Museum of Art The Nasher Museum of Art (previously the Duke University Museum of Art) is the art museum of Duke University, and is located on Duke's campus in Durham, North Carolina, United States. The Nasher, along with Dartmouth's Hood Museum of Art and ...

exhibition on Victorian women's jewellery, related the jewelry to changing 19th-century ideals of feminine beauty and behaviour, reflected in cameo portraiture. Janson died in Devon, Pennsylvania. Her son Anthony Janson is also an art historian.

Works

* (with H. W. Janson) ''The picture history of painting: from cave painting to modern times'', 1957 * (ed. with H. W. Janson) ''Key monuments of the history of art: a visual survey'', 1959 * (with H. W. Janson) ''History of art: a survey of the major visual arts from the dawn of history to the present day'', 1962 * (with H. W. Janson and Joseph Kerman) ''A history of art and music'', 1968 * ''From slave to siren: the Victorian woman and her jewelry, from neoclassic to art nouveau'', 1971 * (with Hugh Johnson and David Revere McFadden) ''Wine, celebration and ceremony'', 1985

References

1916 births 2002 deaths American art historians Women art historians Radcliffe College alumni {{US-art-historian-stub