Professor Jane Pavitt is the Head of the History of Design Programme and Dean of the School of Humanities. She is a specialist in twentieth-century and contemporary design, with a particular area of expertise and interest in design curation. She worked as a research fellow and exhibition curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum for over ten years, curating a series of exhibitions which broadened the framework of understanding for design practice and history in the museum context. These included Brand.New (2000), an exploration of branding from a historical and contemporary perspective; Cold War Modern: Design 1945–70 (2008); and Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970–1990 (2011–12).
Jane Pavitt joined the RCA as Head of History of Design in summer 2010. Previously the University of Brighton Principal Research Fellow at the V&A, she has been responsible for the development of research into twentieth-century and contemporary design and curatorial practices at the V&A since 1997, when she was awarded the University of Brighton Fellowship in conjunction with the British Academy. She completed the principal phase of the Fellowship in 2003, with her report on Product Design and Museology: A Framework for the Millennium, the research for which prepared a new framework for the collection, presentation and interpretation of modern design in the museum. During her time at the V&A, she curated a series of exhibitions: Designing the Digital Age (1999); The Shape of Colour: Red (for the Glasgow 1999 Festival of Architecture and Design); Brand.New, an exploration of branding cultures with former V&A curator and now RCA Senior Tutor Gareth Williams (2000); and Brilliant: Contemporary Lights and Lighting (2004). In 2008 she was lead curator for the major international exhibition Cold War Modern: Design 1945–70 (with consultant curator and RCA Professor David Crowley). This exhibition, described in the press as ‘Britain’s finest design exhibition in years’, subsequently toured to MART, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rovereto, Italy, and the National Gallery of Art, Vilnius, Lithuania (2009).
A graduate of the V&A/RCA History of Design course in 1991, she was Senior Lecturer in Design History at Camberwell College from 1992 to 1997, where she established a BA programme in the History of the Decorative Arts and curated the 1996 exhibition Object Lesson: The Camberwell Collection. Her other varied research interests have included British design post-1945, Czech twentieth-century architecture and the history of curatorial and exhibition practices in design. Her teaching on the course covers aspects of twentieth-century and contemporary architecture and design, including their intersections with the state and corporation, as well as a broad range of methodological and curatorial issues in design history.
She has published a wide range of books and articles in support of her research over the years, and was editor for the book series V&A Contemporary. She has written for a range of journals and design publications, including Blueprint and Design Magazine, and made a number of TV appearances on design issues.
Jane Pavitt is currently supervising MPhil and PhD students in subjects that cover post-war to contemporary design, with a particular interest in the political contexts for design, and its professional organisation.