Jane Milosch, Ph.D.

Jane Milosch is an internationally recognized curator and expert in 20th-century and contemporary art, craft, and design. After graduate art history studies in Munich on a Fulbright Fellowship and studio ceramics in Michigan, Jane began her museum career in 1990 at the Detroit Institute of the Arts, later moving to the Davenport Museum of Art and the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art in Iowa. Jane served as Chief Curator at the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, from 2004 to 2008. While there, Jane organized critically acclaimed exhibitions, including "Grant Wood’s Studio: Birthplace of American Gothic," and the re-launch of the biennial exhibition series, "The Renwick Craft Invitational."

In 2008, Jane became Senior Program Officer for Art in the Smithsonian Institution’s Office of the Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture, to lead strategic planning efforts for the arts at the Smithsonian’s eight art museums and archives, and served as director of the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. After attending the Getty Leadership Institute in 2009, she founded and directed the Smithsonian Provenance Research Initiative, overseeing the Smithsonian’s WWII-era provenance research project. In 2017, Jane launched the Smithsonian’s German/American Provenance Research Exchange Program for Museum Professionals, the first international partnership to address the challenges of Holocaust-era art provenance research. Her accomplishments won her the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

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​Her education includes a Ph.D. History of Art, School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow, UK; certificate Getty Leadership Institute, J. Paul Getty Center, Los Angeles; graduate studies in art history Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany, and in studio ceramics Eastern Michigan University; B.A. cum laude in Art Education and German minor, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Ill.