Mixed media artist Jan Yager died on August 14, 2024, at the age of 72. Yager received a Pew Fellowship in 2003. We mourn her passing.
Yager’s jewelry work drew inspiration and physical materials from her surroundings, both the natural world and the urban environment. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among many other institutions.
In a remembrance, artist Amy Kann, whose art studio was in the same building as Yager’s, notes her community-minded approach to art, including lobbying the city to create a program for free admission to museums and theaters for artists. “She believed that cities were more vibrant with a healthy arts community and that artists needed to be able to see all kinds of art in order to thrive—music, dance and the art museums,” Kann said. “It was so forward-thinking and so generous, both for the city and for artists she might never know. That’s who she was to me. Smart, caring and determined.”
Yager appeared on the 2007 PBS documentary series Craft in America: Memory, Landscape, Community, where she explained, “I think that making things with your hands is a human core instinct, a really important part of us, and I think if we pay attention to the tactile power in craft, we will realize those are the best and the purest values to have.”
In addition to her Pew Fellowship, Yager’s honors included a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, an Anonymous Was A Woman Award, and a William Penn Foundation Award. She earned a BFA in jewelry and metalsmithing from Western Michigan University in 1974 and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1981.