Anne Forschler-Tarrasch was raised in Southern California and received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She completed her Master of Arts degree in History and Art History at the University of California, Riverside, and her Doctorate in Art History at the Technical University in Berlin, Germany.

Anne spent several years in Germany and, while there, focused her education and training on European decorative arts of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, developing a particular love for ceramics and decorative cast iron. In 2009, she furthered her studies in the decorative arts through the Attingham Summer School in England, where she was named the American Friends of Attingham and Lillian Hirschmann Scholar.

Since September 1999, Anne has been The Marguerite Jones Harbert and John M. Harbert III Curator of Decorative Arts at the Birmingham Museum of Art, where she oversees the care, display, and interpretation of a 16,000-object collection. She has curated a number of exhibitions for the Museum and has reinstalled several galleries. Anne recently successfully negotiated the acquisition of the Buten Wedgwood Collection, one of the largest and most comprehensive of its kind.

Anne has contributed to a series of Museum publications and scholarly journals, and in July 2009, published an extensive catalogue of the Museum’s collection of European cast iron entitled, European Cast Iron in the Birmingham Museum of Art: The Gustav Lamprecht and Maurice Garbáty Collections, one of the first works in English on the subject.

Anne is active in a number of national organizations and currently serves on the boards of the Wedgwood International Seminar and the American Ceramic Circle. She is editor of the Proceedings of the Wedgwood International Seminar.

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