Anne Curtis Odom

Background

Anne Odom was born on December 13, 1935, at Mt. Vernon, New York, United States. She was the daughter of Lucien Blanchard and Hazel (Weld) Curtis.

Education

Anne received a Bachelor of Arts from Middlebury College in 1958 and a Master of Arts from Columbia University in 1963.

Career

Anne Odom’s interest in Russian art began in the early 1970s when her husband, Army Lieutenant General William E. Odom, was posted to the United States Embassy in Moscow as a military attache. He later served as director of the National Security Agency under President Ronald Reagan.

Anne joined Hillwood as a guide in 1978, a year after the estate of the late cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post opened to the public. The post had maintained the largest private collection of Russian artwork outside of Russia.

After joining Hillwood, Odom conducted research at the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and wrote books about Post’s collection. Hillwood houses thousands of precious objects, most from the 18th and 19th centuries. It has more than 80 pieces from the Faberge design house as well as silver, porcelain, and portraits from the czarist era.

Odom became a chief curator in 1991 and served simultaneously as chief curator and deputy director of collections from 1997 to 2001. As an authority on Russian art, Odom also contributed to academic studies at the Smithsonian Institution and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Achievements

• Anne Odom was a well-known Russian art expert. She is best known as the author of Russian Imperial Porcelain at Hillwood, which was published in 1999.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Treasures into Tractors: The Selling of Russia's Cultural Heritage, 1918-1938

    (Sixteen scholars from Russia, Vienna, and the United Stat...)

    2009
  • What Became of Peter's Dream?

    (It focuses on the Boyar Ball of 1903, illustrating with o...)

    2003
  • Faberge at Hillwood

    (Examines exemplary pieces from the collection of Marjorie...)

    1996
  • A Taste for Splendor: Russian Imperial and European Treasures from the Hillwood Museum 1998
  • Russian Imperial Porcelain at Hillwood 1999
  • Hillwood: Thirty Years of Collecting, 1977-2007 2007

Membership

Odom was a member of Society of Historians of Eastern European and Russian Art, International Council of Museums Committee of the American Association of Museums, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.

Connections

Anne married William Eldridge Odom on June 9, 1962. They had one son, Mark Weld.

Father:

Lucien Blanchard Curtis

Mother:

Hazel (Weld) Curtis

Spouse:

William Eldridge Odom

Son:

Mark Weld Odom

References

• Contemporary Authors A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields
  2008