Muses on the Mount
Holy Cross Celebrates 40 Years of Women in the Arts
Reunion Presented by the Visual Arts Department
March 22-24, 2013
2013 marks the 40th anniversary of women’s admittance to Holy Cross.
Anna Tobin D'Ambrosio
Anna Tobin D’Ambrosio is the Director and Chief Curator of the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art in Utica, New York, where she has worked since 1989. She holds a master’s degree from the Cooperstown Graduate Program and has furthered her studies through the Attingham Program, Victorian Society Summer School, and a Winterthur research fellowship. She is an expert in 19th-century American decorative arts, specializing in work created between 1840 and 1900 and at MWPA also oversees the decorative arts collection.
Ms. D’Ambrosio lectures extensively across the country and has curated numerous exhibitions, the most recent being Shadow of the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt and Its Influence, referred to as “delightful and memorable” in an August 2012 review of Shadow in the The Wall Street Journal. D’Ambrosio’s exhibition A Brass Menagerie: Metalwork of the Aesthetic Movement was called “One of the small, must-see exhibitions this season,” in an August 2005 review in the New York Times. The accompanying catalogue won four awards including citations from the Victorian Society in America, the Victorian Society Metropolitan Chapter, The Association of Art Museum Curators, and Historic New England.
Her publications include articles for The Magazine Antiques, 19th Century (the magazine of the Victorian Society in America), and book reviews. Her book, Masterpieces of American Furniture from the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute won the 1999 Victorian Society in America Ruth Emory Book Award. She also contributed to and edited the book Jewels of Time: Watches from the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in 2001 and oversaw the corresponding five-year-long national and international tour of the Museum’s 16th-through 20th-century European watch collection. Ms. D’Ambrosio is a member of the American Association of Art Museum Directors and numerous scholarly organizations related to the study of 19th-century decorative arts.
She lives in New Hartford, NY, with her husband Dr. Paul S. D’Ambrosio, the President and CEO of the New York State Historical Association and the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, NY, and their two daughters.
She can be contacted at: atdambro@mwpai.org.