Anne Coffin Hanson

Anne Coffin Hanson (December 12, 1921 – September 3, 2004) was an American art historian. She was the first woman to be hired as a fully tenured professor, serve as president of the College Art Association, and department chair at Yale University.

Early life and education Coffin Hanson was born on December 12, 1921, in Larchmont, New York, to Episcopal minister Francis Joseph Howells Coffin and mother Annie Roulhac Coffin. She then attended the University of Southern California for her bachelor of fine arts degree in painting and married Warfield Garson before graduating. As she began having children with Garson, Coffin Hanson lectured at Wagner College. She studied at the Arts Students League in New York City between 1944 and 1945 and enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for her master's degree in painting.

Upon completing her MFA, and divorcing her first husband, Coffin Hanson taught at Princeton Day School between 1952 and 1955 and at the University of Buffalo.

Career Coffin Hanson completed her PhD in 1962 and accepted professorships at Swarthmore College, Cornell University, and Bryn Mawr College before joining the staff at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). In 1968, she was appointed Director of the Museum's International Study Center where she would "coordinate and initiate projects involving scholarly research." Two years after becoming director, Coffin Hanson became the first woman to be hired as Full professor at Yale from outside the institution. She later published Manet and the Modern Tradition in 1976, which won the Charles Rufus Morey Award for art history scholarship from the College Art Association. By 1978, Hanson was named John Hay Whitney Professor of the History of Art and later served as head of the Yale University Art Gallery.

Coffin Hanson retired from Yale University in 1992 and subsequently became the Samuel H. Kress Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art. Coffin Hanson died on September 3, 2004, in New Haven.