Women In Design

Curator Anne Ryan pours art and soul into her work at the Art Gallery of NSW.

As a young girl, Sydneysider Anne Ryan was always immersed in books. She loved the storylines, but was just as captivated by the black and white illustrations that accompanied them. “They introduced me to the power of drawing to tell a story,” she says.

While studying art history at uni, Anne worked as a volunteer at the Art Gallery of NSW, in the print room, where she “fell in love with the notion of working in a museum and caring for objects”. She gained a masters in art administration, which led to an internship at the Art Institute of Chicago in the mid-1990s. Back in Sydney, she landed a job cataloguing the AGNSW collections, then a role as assistant curator.

In 2005, she was promoted to Curator of Australian Prints, Drawings and Watercolours, overseeing a collection of 7500 drawings, 5500 prints and 1000 watercolours. In tandem with being responsible for protecting the physical condition of these works, Anne advocates for the moral rights of the artists (living and deceased) she represents, determines which works to purchase and exhibit, and fields queries from the public and media about the objects in her care.

“The traditional definition of a curator is a ‘keeper’ of objects and I have the pleasure of looking after one of the major collections in the country,” she says. “I feel very privileged and lucky to do that.”