A lover of the arts from a young age, Jan C. Cavanaugh, PhD, MAC commenced her journey upon earning a Bachelor of Arts in English literature in 1967 and a Master of Arts in 1972, both from the University of California, Berkeley. Awarded a Fulbright grant to study arts in Poland as an exchange student at the University of Warsaw, she studied Polish art history and culture and through visits to the national museums and discovered the richness of the Polish visual art tradition. Inspired to pursue art history further, Dr. Cavanaugh went on to obtain a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin in 1989 and later a master’s degree in art conservation from Queen’s University in Canada in 2000.

Among her professional work, Dr. Cavanaugh was the curator of art for the Reed College Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery in Portland, Oregon from 1989 to 1991. Thereafter, she served as an assistant professor at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and the University of Missouri at Columbia between 1991 and 1996, where her courses included those on the early 20th-century Russian and Eastern European avant-garde. She went on to teach as an adjunct professor at the University of Oregon from 2002 to 2007, where she designed a course on the history, varying practices and controversies in the field of art conservation. In 2007, she spearheaded her business, Jan Cavanaugh Paintings Conservation Services, in Portland, Oregon.

A prolific writer in addition to her skills in art conservation, Ms. Cavanaugh authored  “Selections from the Reed College Art Collection” and “Out Looking In: Early Modern Polish Art, 1890-1918,” the first comprehensive study of the topic in English and an essential stimulus for rethinking European modernism. To remain abreast of her field, Ms. Cavanaugh maintains affiliation with the College Art Association of America, the Society Historians of East European, Russian Art, and Architecture, the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works and the Western Association for Art Conservation. In her spare time, she enjoys painting and operatic singing.