YEO2, US Navy Anna E. Keener (Wilton)

Anna E. Keener (Wilton) enlisted in the Navy in August of 1918 and was assigned to cost inspection duties at Detroit’s Motor Company. ¹ On weekends, she attended the Detroit School of Art. ¹ Apart from nurses, women were barred from participating in the military prior to World War I. The Naval Act of 1916, however, contained language that inadvertently allowed women to enlist in the reserve. ² With women performing administrative duties, more men were freed to serve on ships. The women Navy recruits served in several capacities including truck drivers, stenographers, and radio operators, though most women enlistees became yeoman, designated as yeoman F for female. ²

Keener Wilton was an internationally known artist and educator who produced under the name Anna E. Keener. She was born in Flagler, Colorado in 1895 to Eva May Young and Frank Keener. The family moved to Dalhart, Texas in 1902 and Keener graduated from Dalhart High School in the spring of 1913. She enrolled at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas in the fall of 1913, and studied under international artist Birger Sandzén. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1915 and a Bachelor of Arts in 1918.

After being discharged in 1919, Keener returned to Bethany College as a professor of art. In 1923, she authored a book entitled Spontaneity in Design. In the same year she married Louis Raymond Wilton and had twin daughters. The couple moved to New Mexico in 1934. They later divorced and Keener supported her twin girls on her teacher’s salary. In 1941, she spent time studying art in Mexico City.

Keener moved to Portales, New Mexico in 1942 where she became the head of the Art Department at Eastern New Mexico University. In 1951 Keener received her Master of Arts degree from the University of New Mexico. Deeply interested in education, Keener taught in Kansas, New Mexico, Michigan, Arizona, Texas, and Indiana. For more than a decade Keener judged school art for the New Mexico State Fair. Over the course of her life, she studied at the Chicago Art Institute, the Kansas City Art Institute, the Detroit School of Design, Colorado State Teachers College, the California College of Arts and Crafts, and the University of New Mexico.

In 1953, Keener retired from Eastern New Mexico University and settled in Santa Fe where she became active in jurying exhibitions and focusing on her own art. She was a life fellow of the International Institute of Arts and Letters and a charter member of the Art of America Society. ³ She was a founder of the New Mexico Art Education Association and helped to organize the New Mexico Arts Commission. ³ She was a board member of the Western Arts Association and was the state and local fine arts chairwoman for the New Mexico Federation of Women’s Clubs and the American Association of University Women. In 1964 Keener became the president of the Santa Fe chapter of the Artists Equity Association. ¹ In 1968, she received the Distinguished Alumni Award of Merit from Bethany College, and in 1975 was named Woman of the Year by the Santa Fe chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma, the international organization for women educators.¹

Keener produced oil paintings, wood and linoleum cuts, sculptures, and murals mainly of American Southwest themes. Her work has been exhibited in numerous art shows, one-woman exhibits, professional buildings, and galleries. ³ One journalist described Keener’s approach, “At heart, she is an experimentalist, full of the zest for getting the most out of paint and life.” ¹ Keener’s art is housed in both private and public collections including the Vanderpoel Collection in Chicago. ³ Her mural “Zuni Pottery Making” can be seen at the McKinley County Courthouse in Gallup, New Mexico. Ron Michael, director of the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery & David Cook Galleries, wrote of Keener, “Her life as an artist, educator, and proponent of the arts has created a lasting legacy that should be revered and remembered.” ¹