Anne Timpano
Anne Timpano earned a B.A. in Fine Arts/Art History at the College of William and Mary and an M.A. in Art History at George Washington University. Anne is currently retired from a career in museums. She was Museum Specialist in Program Management at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Executive Director at the Columbus Museum in Georgia, and Director of the University Galleries and Art Collections at both the University of Cincinnati and the University of Mary Washington. Concurrently, Anne served on boards and advisory panels for a variety of other non-profit museum organizations.
Anne was the Founding Director of the Graduate Certificate Program in Museum Studies at the University of Cincinnati, and Founding Chair of the Faculty Committee for the Museum Studies Minor at the University of Mary Washington. She taught courses in Museum Management, Collections Management, Museum Education, Problems in Museum Administration, and Technology in Museums.
She served as a juror for numerous art competitions and festivals, organized dozens of museum exhibitions, authored numerous exhibition catalogs, and served as a museum surveyor and grant reviewer for such organizations as the American Alliance of Museums, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Georgia Council for the Arts.
In 2018-2021 nine of Anne’s works were featured in a traveling exhibition at the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts in Texas; the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum, Palm Beach, Florida; and the Farmington Museum in New Mexico. Anne also has exhibited her work at the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art at the University of Richmond; the Maryland Federation of Art in Annapolis; the FSU Museum of Fine Arts in Tallahassee, Florida; the Brogan Museum of Art and Science in Tallahassee; the Clifton Cultural Arts Center in Cincinnati; and the Doug Adams Gallery of the Badè Museum in Berkeley, California. In 2013, Anne’s work was featured in a solo exhibition titled “Venus: Lessons of a 21st-Century Goddess” at the Backdoor Gallery in its former Plank Road location in Fredericksburg. Anne was the First Prize recipient at the “For and About Women” exhibition at the Fredericksburg Center for the Creative Arts in March 2010.
Artist’s Statement:
I work primarily in printmaking, painting, and mixed media. I focus on specific subject matter themes that I tend to explore in considerable depth. One major thematic area is the experience of being a woman in modern society. This body of work borrows the figure of Venus from Botticelli's Birth of Venus (ca. 1485) and reinvents her in a modern context. By placing the Venus figure in various exaggerated and humorous configurations, I seek to raise questions about the nature of womanhood and to critique and parody aspects of our society in which we often find ourselves engaged.
Another area of interest is the osprey, or fish hawk, of the Chesapeake Bay. My fascination with this magnificent bird stems not only from the fact that it is a beautiful creature that I love to observe in its natural habitat, but also because the Osprey was immortalized in an ancient Chinese poem, Song of the Ospreys, where it is a symbol of marital fidelity because it mates for life. This poem is a love song that tells of a young prince’s search for a suitable bride, and it is one of the best known poems in all of Chinese literature. It is from the Book of Songs, which is considered the fountainhead of Chinese literature and is an anthology of 305 poems edited by Confucius (551-479 BCE). The poems may be dated from the 12th to the 7th c. BCE. Below is a translation of the first verse of the poem:
“Hark! From the islet in the stream the voice
Of the fish hawks that o’er their nest rejoice!
From them our thoughts to that young lady go,
Modest and virtuous, loth herself to show.
Where could be found, to share our prince’s state
So fair, so virtuous, and so fit a mate?”
In my paintings, I have recently focused on subjects that reflect my affinity for scenes involving water in some way. One area of concentration is that of sunrises and predawn views of the Potomac River. I am fascinated by the extraordinary range of colors and cloud formations under varying conditions, as well as by the reflections those elements impose on the water below. From the broad expanses of the Potomac River to the intimacy of a water feature in a Japanese Garden, water, for me, symbolizes life in all its forms and brings to mind the fragility of that life and how, in our day, it is up to us to act on its behalf as responsible stewards.
