Sharon Patton

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Sharon Patton

Sharon F. Patton (born 1944) is an American historian who specializes in African art.

Early life and education

She was born in southern part of

Champaign-Urbana where she got her master's degree three years later. The same year, she became a student at the University of Chicago and by 1980, obtained her Ph.D. in the history of African art at the Northwestern University.[1]

Career

In 1968, Patton began her career as an instructor for the art department at

University of Maryland, which in the end, led her to become the art director at Montclair State University of New Jersey by 1986.[1]

In 1987, she became a curator-in-chief of the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. In 1991, she relocated to the University of Michigan where she worked as an associate professor. In 1998, Patton was named an art director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum which was a department of Oberlin College. In 2003, she relocated again, this time to Washington, D.C. where she worked as a director of the National Museum of African Art, a department of Smithsonian Institution until 2008.[1][2]

During her life, she held 20 exhibitions, three of which were in the Studio Museum.[1]

Publications

Her first book Memory and Metaphor: The Art of Romare Bearden won the Choice’s Outstanding Academic Book of the Year Award. She is also an author of 1983 published Traditional Forms and Modern Africa: West African Art at the University of Maryland, a 1987 Witches, Demons and Metamorphoses, and 1990s Vincent C. Smith, Reding on a Blue Note.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "Sharon F. Patton (1944-)". Oberlin College. Archived from the original on December 23, 2013. Retrieved December 4, 2013.
  2. ^ "National Museum of African Art Director Announces Resignation" (Press release). Smithsonian Institution. May 16, 2008. Retrieved 14 March 2021.