Staff Photo by Dan Henry/Chattanooga Times Free Press
Anne Willson is the new executive director of AVA.In retrospect, Anne Willson’s career path seems to have been a step-by-step education in preparation to become executive director of the Association for Visual Arts.
AVA is a nonprofit whose membership includes many of the area’s professional and emerging artists. Its mission is to promote and support original visual art and artists, according to its website.
Willson is an artist, has been a gallery manager, co-owned her own studio and was museum administrator for the Weatherspoon Art Museum.
She has organized regional public art forums, developed programming and written columns for North Carolina’s Triad Style magazine.
As founding director of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s ArtsLink, she developed the university’s first collective for its nine performance programs. In addition to coordinating community programs and marketing for ArtsLink, she took on student interns to give them hands-on experience in arts administration.