Rhea Anastas (born March 11, 1969) is an American art historian, critic and curator who is an associate professor at the University of California, Irvine. She is one of the founding members of the artist-run gallery Orchard in New York City.
Anastas was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts. She received her B.A. and M.A. in Art History from Columbia University in 1990 and 1995 respectively, and her Ph.D. in Art History from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2004. Her dissertation was titled The Whole Artist: Dan Graham and Robert Smithson, Works and Writings, 1965–69.
Anastas taught at the Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere program at the Roski School of Art and Design, University of Southern California, The Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture at Bard College, and was a lecturer at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.