At Lawndale, Walker will oversee all aspects of the institution's artistic programs, fundraising, and day-to-day operations while providing leadership to Lawndale’s team of staff and committed volunteers. Walker will bring a new vision that explores and expands upon Lawndale’s 42-year history of supporting Houston artists and its mission to engage Houston communities with exhibitions and programs that explore the aesthetic, critical, and social issues of our time.
With a life-long professional commitment to the arts and artists, Walker has spent over a decade working in Houston. She comes to Lawndale from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), where she has served as Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts, Craft, and Design and the Windgate Foundation Curatorial Fellow for Contemporary Craft. Prior to joining the MFAH, Anna was the Curator at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (HCCC), a kunsthalle-style space where she oversaw up to twelve exhibitions a year. She holds a BA in Art from Otterbein University with a focus on ceramics and printmaking and an MA in Arts Administration from Indiana University.
"Lawndale is a critical connector and incubator for the arts in Houston, and I am thrilled to be joining its team,” said Walker. “I’ve long been impressed with Lawndale’s risk taking, which I’m looking forward to continuing. I am especially excited to be returning to an artist-centered practice in the city I love, where I can work as a collaborator, connecting artists and Houston communities more broadly. It’s a very special thing to join an organization with a strong board and a solid team in place, and I look forward to the things we are going to build together."
Walker is admired for her broad curatorial practice; notable exhibitions include the traveling show CTRL+P, a field-leading exploration of the intersections of digital technology and craft, The Burdens of History, a critical re-examination of the origin myths of studio ceramics, that reasserted the role of indigenous, women and artists of color in building the field. Her most recent project is Olga de Amaral: To Weave a Rock, a retrospective of the pioneering Colombian artist, co-curated with Laura Mott at the Cranbrook Art Museum. The touring exhibition opened summer 2021 at the MFAH. She is further recognized as a sought after curator and thought leader, serving as a guest curator for the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA), and a speaker and visiting critic at institutions throughout Houston and across the country.
Lawndale’s Board Chair, Meghan Miller, states, “We believe that Anna’s passion for and commitment to artists, alongside her decade-long engagement with the Houston community, makes her the right leader to shepherd Lawndale into its next vibrant chapter.”
Walker’s appointment concludes a nine-month search led by Lawndale’s Executive and Search Committees. She will assume her role at Lawndale on November 1, 2021.
