Annie Elizabeth Shaver-Crandell

---

Annie Elizabeth Shaver-Crandell
Born	Anne Elizabeth Shaver (1941-08-12) August 12, 1941 Oberlin, Ohio, U.S.
🏫 Education	Oberlin College (BA) New York University Institute of Fine Arts (MA) Columbia University (Ph.D)
💼 Occupation	Art Historian, Author, Activist, Artist, Archivist
🌐 Website	annieshavercrandell.com

Annie Elizabeth Shaver-Crandell (née Shaver; born August 12, 1941) is an American medieval art historian and artist. As an art historian Shaver-Crandell taught for more than 30 years and published multiple texts on the topic. After her retirement from work as a teacher, Shaver-Crandell dedicated her time to being a visual artist. Her works span multiple mediums but primarily consist of oil paintings, watercolors, and monotypes. Beyond her work as an artist, Shaver-Crandell has also held membership and a variety of leadership roles in the Women's Caucus for Art and the Salmagundi Club of New York.

Born in Oberlin, Ohio and a graduate of Oberlin College, Shaver-Crandell has worked as an art historian, academic, author, activist, artist, and an archivist. Her work has been featured in numerous art shows, including at the Salmagundi club.

Early life and education

Anne Elizabeth Shaver was born August 12, 1941 in Oberlin, Ohio to Chester Linn Shaver and Alice Crafts Shaver. Her older brother, Phillip, was born 3 years prior. Her family lived in the town of Oberlin for most of her life while her father taught at Oberlin College. He and Anne attended public elementary and high schools in Oberlin, with the exception of 1956-57, when the family spent a sabbatical year in London. After her return she gained her high school diploma in 1958.

She earned her BA as a student of Art History from Oberlin College. While there, she fulfilled her mandatory studio art classes, an experience that would stick with her and later become her second career. Following her graduation from Oberlin College in 1962, Shaver-Crandell moved to the east coast and began at New York University Institute of Fine Arts. She graduated from both with an MA in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University and an M.Phil and PhD from the Department of Art History and Archaeology of Columbia University in 1974. Her area of principal specialization was the architecture and sculpture of the Pilgrimage Roads of France and Spain, which reflected in her later publications.

Teaching

In 1967, after a year teaching at Rutgers, Shaver-Crandell was hired by The City University of New York as a professor in the Department of Art. She taught there from the fall of 1967 to January of 2000. She gained tenure and served as Department chair from 1989-1992. She retired after The City College offered to buy her out in 1999, allowing her an early retirement and the chance to switch to her second career as an artist.

Her first publication was in the Cambridge University Press’s introduction to the history of the arts. Titled “The Middle Ages” the book explored different styles of art and architecture in Western Europe in the middle ages. Her second publication, an annotated translation of The Pilgrim's Guide to Santiago de Compostela, was published with Alison Stone and Paula Gerson. The translation process began in 1974 and continued until its publication in 1995.

Other relevant publications include “Annie Shaver-Crandell”, a piece written as an artist's statement for the exhibition for Quilts and Carousels: Folk Art in the Firelands in 1983, “Art and Bad Manners on the Way of Saint James: The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela” posted in Kaleidoscope in 1984, and “Woman Perceived: On Teaching the Imagery of Women in Art" written for Women’s Studies Quarterly in 1987.

Even after retirement Shaver-Crandell continued to teach, turning instead to art. She began holding adult-centered classes on watercolor and other mediums. These classes are still offered at her studio.

Artistry and activism

Inspired by the studio classes taken at Oberlin, Shaver-Crandell used her retirement from teaching as an opportunity to explore a career as an artist. She had begun taking art classes again in the 1980s, but her interest in art had been life long. Her works tend to depict the world around her, exploring how color shows up and interacts. Much of her work shows her interest in permanence and finding the edges of the world. Her paintings often show still-life or landscape scenes of flowers, plants, and especially horses.

In 1979, Shaver-Crandell joined the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA), a non-profit collection of women artists, students, teachers, and art historians who aim to further the promotion of women in the arts. She served as president for the NYC chapter, the Northeast regional chapter, and the caucus itself from 1986 to 1988.

From 1997 to 2000 Shaver-Crandell spent intermittent weeks and months in Basin, Montana, as an artist in residence for the Montana Artist’s Refuge. The opportunities at the refuge helped Shaver-Crandell to cultivate the skills she had been working on through classes since the 1980s, while she was still working on her publishing and teaching. The seclusion and space for ‘’en plein air’’ painting made the residences perfect for Shaver-Crandell.

Her first solo show as a painter was in 2000, at the Synagogue for the Arts. Other early shows included many weeks at PaulaBarrChelsea, the owner, Paula Barr has since been a trusted advisor to Shaver-Crandell. She has exhibited at libraries and other public institutions in New Jersey, New York City, Long Island, and in Oberlin.

In 2001, Shaver-Crandell joined the Salmagundi Club of New York, an organization formed for patrons of the arts and artists to support one another through exhibitions and relationships. As a member of the club Shaver-Crandell served on the Board of Directors as both chair of the program committee or the recording secretary from 2009 through 2019.

Personal life

While working on a painting project for the Women’s Strike for Peace against the Vietnam War, Annie Shaver met and photographed a man named Keith Hawley Crandell (b. 7 October 1927). The two reconnected six years later in 1974 and married two years later, on June 12th, 1976. Anne changed her surname to Shaver-Crandell, and began using Annie as her preferred first name. The two were married until May 2005 when Keith Crandell died.

After accepting her early retirement in 1999 Shaver-Crandell was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. She had radiation treatment in 2000 for 6 weeks, but the results of being both a cancer- and stroke-survivor has profoundly influenced her physical, emotional, mental and creative life ever since.

Shaver Crandell picked up Tango in 2007 and has been a dancer of social Argentine tango ever since. The influence of Tango can be seen in many of her abstract pieces and some figurative pieces.

In 2011 she began a domestic partnership with Daniel Patrick Dillon (b. 21 November 1958). She would marry him four years later on February 14th, 2015 the marriage ended in divorce November 21st, 2016. Shaver-Crandell now works with her two assistants to manage her art collection.

References

This article "Annie Shaver" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Annie Shaver. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

---