Jane Eckett is a lecturer in art history and curatorship in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, where she has taught since 2010. Her research focuses on modernist sculpture, public art and memorials, diaspora art and migr networks, while she teaches primarily Australian and European art since the late eighteenth century to the present. She holds a Masters of Letters (MLitt) from Trinity College Dublin, awarded in 2007, and a PhD from the University of Melbourne, awarded in 2017 for her thesis on the Centre Five group of modernist sculptors.

From 2020 to 2023 she was the postdoctoral researcher on an Australian Research Council funded Discovery Project, The Abbey Art Centre: Reassessing post-WW2 Australian art, 19461956', working with a multi-institutional team of researchers led by Ian McLean at the University of Melbourne. As recipient of a 2021 Melbourne Research Fellowship (career interruptions), she researched post-WW2 modernist sculpture in Australia, while as the 2018 Ursula Hoff Fellow she researched prints by the Bauhausler Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack in the Ian Potter Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Victoria.

She is co-editor and co-author of the award-winning On Bunurong Country: art and design in Frankston (McClelland, Langwarrin, 2023), which won best Collaborative Community History at the 2023 Victorian History Awards. Other recent publications include Making strange: Hirschfeld-Mack, Klee, the monoprint and the avant-garde diaspora' for Avant-Garde Works on Paper (Routledge, 2024), an article on the Lithuanian-Australian modernist sculptor Teisutis Zikaras for Meno istorijos studijos / Art History Studies (2023), and an essay on Barbara Hepworth's influence in Australia for the catalogue Barbara Hepworth: In Equilibrium (Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, 2022), which won the 2023 Art Association of Australia and Newland (AAANZ) best medium sized exhibition catalogue.

Curatorial highlights include Centre Five: bridging the gap (McClelland, Langwarrin, 2022-23) and Melbourne Modern: European Art and Design at RMIT since 1945 (co-curated with Harriet Edquist, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2019). The catalogue for Melbourne Modern was awarded AAANZ best medium sized catalogue in 2020.

Public guest appearances include delivery of the 2019 Duldig Lecture, two Melbourne Masterclass lectures for the NGV's Winter Masterpieces exhibitions The Picasso Century (2022) and Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi (2023), and panel speaker for the Sorrento Writers Festival (2023 and 2024).

Since 2012 she has served on the National Trust of Australia (Vic.) Public Art Committee, and currently is a member of the Australian Centre for Architectural History and Urban and Cultural Heritage (ACAHUCH) advisory board in the Melbourne School of Design (20232025).

Dr

Jane Eckett

Lecturer, Art History & Curatorship

School of Culture and Communication

Dr

Jane Eckett

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Faculty of Arts

Primary Interest

Modern and contemporary art

Dr

Jane Eckett

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