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Jan Gilbert
American Mixed Media artist
(New Orleans, 1953 – )
Jan Gilbert (b. 1953, New Orleans) is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator whose work mines memory, loss, and transition. Working in a wide range of media, including traditional and camera-based arts, her installations have intervened with public spaces such as bus shelters and storefront windows; and have also been presented in galleries, museums, and cultural centers.
Gilbert earned an MFA in painting from Tulane in 1982 and a bachelors from the University of New Orleans in 1980. In 1984 she co-founded The Vestiges Project with Debra Howell and Kristen Struebing-Beazley as a collaborative with invited writers and guests, in which projects arose from queries the core artists posed and were often site-specific in nature. She has been instrumental in founding, developing, and sustaining several major arts organizations in New Orleans, such as A Studio in the Woods, the New Orleans Women’s Caucus for Art, and the Contemporary Arts Center.
Gilbert has taught and mentored students at Delgado Community College, Dillard University, Loyola, NOCCA, NYU, Xavier, Tulane, and Vermont College of Fine Arts, among other schools and arts venues. Her work has been recognized by many awards including the 2013 Arts Council of New Orleans Community Arts Award and individual artist’s fellowships from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Southern Arts Federation/National Endowment for the Arts, Louisiana Division of the Arts, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and Art Matters; and project support from the NEA/Rockefeller Initiative for Interdisciplinary Artists, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Ford Foundation, Trust for Mutual Understanding, and National Association of Artist’s Organizations. In 2019 she curated “Art Of The City: Postmodern To Post-Katrina” at The Historic New Orleans Collection.
