Nannine Jane "Nan" Quick Sheets

American, 1885-1976

BiographyArtist, teacher, and museum director Nannine Jane "Nan" Quick Sheets was born December 9, 1885 (some sources say 1889), in Albany, Illinois. In 1905 she graduated from Indiana's Valparaiso College School of Pharmacy. Five years later she married a classmate, physician Fred C. Sheets. Living briefly in Bartlesville and Muskogee, the couple moved to Oklahoma City in 1916. In 1919 she began summer classes with John F. Carlson, N. A., at the Broadmoor Academy of Fine Arts in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Additional instructors that Sheets credited included Robert Reid, Everett Warner, and Birger Sandzen. An excellent student, she earned scholarships as well as the school's special prize in landscape.

From 1932 to 1962 she wrote articles for the Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City) newspaper about the art scene at home and abroad. The Oklahoma Woman magazine. Increasingly in the public eye and in demand as lecturer, juror, and judge across the country, she was invited to co-manage Oklahoma's earliest New Deal project, and eighteen months later she became director of the Works Progress Administration's Oklahoma art presence, initially named the WPA Experimental Art Gallery and later the WPA Oklahoma Art Center. She was one of the few women selected as state directors.
When World War II ended federal involvement in art centers, Nan Sheets and other art supporters infused the Oklahoma City center with new life as a museum. For the rest of her career she was closely aligned with the growth of the Oklahoma Art Center

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