Anna Jones Burckhardt was born in Burlington, Iowa in 1868. She married the Reverend Oliver J. Burckhardt in 1898 and joined him in Lincoln, Nebraska where he had moved from Missouri in 1890. Together, they provided secular and spiritual leadership to both the African American and the broader Lincoln community, and were two of the city’s most influential and esteemed African Americans.
Burckhardt was a self-taught artist and a respected and beloved art teacher for over 40 years. In an era when most African American women found employment as domestic help, Burckhardt’s ability to develop her artistic talent was singular. Even during a time of troubled race relations, she chose to teach both black and white children in her private studio. She is most known for oil painting and china painting, and achieved national recognition for her painting of utilitarian objects such as lamps, tiles, china, and furniture. She received a bronze medal for her hand-painted china at the 1907 Jamestown Virginia Tercentennial Exposition. During her lifetime, she undertook several commissioned artworks, significant because most professional artists hired during this time period were white. One of Burckhardt’s commissioned pieces was for the People’s City Mission, a non-profit organization that cares for the homeless in Lincoln. She was also hired by the State of Nebraska to complete some touch-up work on several valuable paintings in the Nebraska State Capitol building. Anna Burckhardt died in 1945 in Lincoln, Nebraska, and is buried in the city’s Wyuka Cemetery.
Anna Burckhardt was included in the exhibition A Greater Spectrum: African American Artists of Nebraska 1912-2010 on view at the Museum of Nebraska Art from December 4, 2010 to April 3, 2011.
Anna Burckhardt is not represented in the Museum of Nebraska Art collection.
2015
