Anna Fay Albin

Artist Biography

Anna Fay Albin, born in Berea, Kentucky in 1880, was recognized for both her handloom weaving and landscape paintings. She graduated from Berea College and pursued formal art training at the Art Academy of Cincinnati with history painter Charles Webber and at the Handcraft Guild in Minneapolis with impressionist landscape painter Charles Svendsen. Her artistic studies continued in Vienna, Austria where she studied alongside landscape painter Alfred Yirasek from 1923 to 1924.

Upon returning to the United States, Albin settled in Lincoln, where she served on the art faculty of Nebraska Wesleyan College (now Nebraska Wesleyan University). She also worked as an art instructor at Doane College (now Doane University) in Crete, Nebraska where an endowed scholarship continues in her name.

Albin’s talent with handloom weaving transitioned her work from a craft to a recognized fine art. Her skill earned recognition at exhibitions, including those organized by the Omaha Society of Fine Arts in the mid-1920s. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln also featured a dedicated display case to showcase her weavings. Simultaneously, her landscape paintings were showcased in exhibitions by the Lincoln Artists’ Guild, with appearances at the C.C. White Memorial Building in 1937; Morrill Hall in 1940 and 1941; and Miller and Paine Department Store in 1940 and 1941. She also served as Lincoln Artists’ Guild’s Secretary in 1931.