Leslie Anderson, new executive director of the Rollins Museum of Art at Rollins College, grew up on a diet of cultural richness and curiosity that would provide nourishment for a literal world of experiences.
Raised in Polk County, Anderson became fascinated with art and culture early in life, encouraged by her parents’ travels and hunger for knowledge. Says Anderson: “My parents ensured that I understood that art was kind of an entry point to better understand our past and our present.”
A trip to Spain with her mother became an opportunity for Anderson to study European art collections. It was no leap when she “decided to fully commit myself to art history” as a student at the University of Florida, where she cut her curatorial teeth at the school’s Harn Museum of Art.
Multiple degrees would follow. As a Fulbright Scholar, Anderson was appointed to the University of Copenhagen. But, she adds, “a lot of my research was conducted at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and the National Archives. I really thought it important for me to actually be in close proximity to the paintings I was writing about.”
Since then, Anderson has served at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts and the National Nordic Museum in Seattle. In September, she returned to Central Florida for the job at Rollins, where plans were afoot to expand its on-campus museum into a new 31,000-square-foot facility in Downtown Winter Park.
The timing is ideal, she says, since the move will allow the museum—which has a collection of nearly 6,000 objects and a satellite operation for its contemporary art holdings in the college-owned Alfond Inn—to “position itself as a leader in Central Florida and more broadly in the state of Florida for the arts.”
Happy to return home after an 18-year absence, Anderson says her experience has equipped her to engage a broader audience with the museum’s eclectic collections. A big part of that, she notes, will involve input from the “concentric circles” of the campus community, Winter Park and, more broadly, all of Central Florida.
Adds Anderson: “I think that Rollins has great potential to be a leader among academic art museums, but with its amazing world-class collection of contemporary art, to be on a platform that’s able to incorporate other important global connections.”
The Rollins Museum of Art is (for now) still located on campus at 1000 Holt Avenue, Winter Park. For more information, call 407.646.2526 or visit rollins.edu.
