Lee Ann Garrison takes new position at MA&A and Research in Painting
Lee Ann Garrison, former Director of School of Visual Studies from 2019-2025, has accepted a new part time appointment as the Interim Associate Director of the MU Museum of Art and Archaeology after the MAA Director left MU for a new position in August. Garrison previously held administrative positions at Oregon State University as the Director of the School of Arts and Communications, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) as the Director of Foundations, Associate Chair, and Chair of the Department of Art and Design. She spent 2013-2014 as Interim Associate Dean for Innovation and Curricular Design in the UWM Lubar School of Business. “When I first started as chair of Art and Design at UW Milwaukee, the Chancellor met with all the department chairs. During the meeting the Chancellor said to us, "A good chair enjoys the success of others," and I thought, "I do like seeing people succeed." Garrison has kept that mentality throughout her administrative career and will continue to do so.
Garrison is also taking her very first research leave for the 2025-2026 academic year, working in her studio on a new series of oil paintings. In a full circle moment after working in arts administration over the last few decades, Garrison is back to her passion of painting. Garrison initially wanted a career as a full-time artist, only accepting a tenure track position in her mid-40s.
Garrison is a painter and art professor with degrees in painting from Southern Illinois University, California State University-Long Beach, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has exhibited her oil paintings in galleries in New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, Oregon, and California, and is in over 80 private collections across the US. At the University of Missouri, she has taught Painting and the History of Graphic Design. Now Lee Ann is focused on painting with the luxury of time on her side. In her studio she is researching the watersheds in Missouri, especially the watershed that connects her own backyard to the Little Bonne Femme Creek on to the Missouri River. "I have loved and been fascinated by the dendritic system of water, the branching system of streams to rivers and lakes, since I was a little kid.” She has also created paintings of the dendritic systems of trees from roots to branches, and even the same system in the branching of human capillaries and veins. “I love painting observations of these systems as my main subject."
Looking back on her career, Lee Ann shares a highlight. Garrison said she loved her position as the Director of the School of Visual Studies and was thrilled when Dr. Cathleen Fleck accepted the position, arriving in late July. "Out of all of the universities where I have worked, Mizzou has been my favorite place. I love the faculty in the School of Visual Studies. They all have such great research and creative projects going on. And seeing the students in our school excel is always great."
