Jane Handel works as an art dealer, exhibition curator, archivist, and writer while continuing to make her own art that she has developed from early childhood. The art media that Ms. Handel currently deals in reflect not only the diversity of her own artistic expression and influences but also her professional experience. This broad range of experience has allowed her to deftly transverse genres and mediums, curate groundbreaking gallery exhibits, and become a consultant for individual collectors. Most recently she has become a personal archivist – helping individuals edit and protect their lifelong collections of family snapshots and mementos.

Ms. Handel has been the photo editor for several books, including Invitation to the Voyage, an illustrated poem by Charles Baudelaire (Bulfinch Press, 1997), and You’re the Top, a Love Song by Cole Porter (Simon & Schuster, 1999). She was the co-author of I’m Still Living, “wacky” postcards from the (photo) collections of Jane Handel and Frish Brandt (Chronicle Books, 2002). Photographs from Ms. Handel’s personal collection have also been used by designers to illustrate several book jackets including, Machine Dreamsby Jayne Anne Phillips (Vintage Books, 1994), Music or Forgetting by E. Tracy Grinnell (O Books, 2001) and George Oppen: A Radical Practice by Susan Thackrey (O Books, 2001).

As a result of twenty years experience working in fine art galleries in California, including ten years at the internationally renowned Thackrey and Robertson Gallery in San Francisco, Ms. Handel’s acumen for traditional as well as contemporary art grew. At Thackrey and Robertson, in particular, she honed her interest in and knowledge of photography, traditional prints, drawings and vintage posters. Simultaneously, she developed a passion for found photographs and helped to spearhead the effort to gain wider recognition of the genre by co-curating several exhibits of snapshots and other anonymous photographs at various San Francisco galleries. When Thackrey and Robertson closed in 1994, Ms. Handel became a private art dealer, specializing in the works of recognized masters, as well as those by unknown artists, especially photographers, whose works she continued to champion. This latter contribution to the art world has influenced the collections of art collectors, international galleries and museums including historic exhibits at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Ms. Handel’s own visual artwork has appeared in numerous gallery and museum exhibitions and has been reproduced in several publications; her writing has been published in several book anthologies, as well as print and Internet magazines. Some of her published articles are about the artistic experience, and others are critiques of contemporary artist’s work and specific exhibits. These articles include a featured critique of Jim Goldberg’s “Raised by Wolves” exhibit at SFMOMA (Citysearch, 1997), and “Women in the Waves: the Work of Masami Teraoka” (Persimmon Magazine, 2001). In 1990, she became a publisher of artist’s books and broadsides with the founding of SpiderWoman Press, which has, thusfar, published four books and a broadside.

Her expertise in contemporary art, the dominant movements of the last century and a half of what we call “modern” art, as well as tribal and folk art has lent itself to a unique artistic vision and aesthetic. Collectors and art directors continue to look to Jane Handel as a source of unique and exceptional images as well as a trusted art commentator. To the extent that her own life has been enriched by looking at, making and collecting art, the sharing of this passion for art is always paramount.