Amy Namowitz Worthen

Amy Namowitz Worthen is an American printmaker, engraver, curator, art historian of prints and author. She is the Curator of Prints and Drawings, Emerita at the Des Moines Art Center.

Biography

She was born Amy Louise Namowitz on August 13, 1946, in New York City. Worthen studied at the High School of Music and Art. Worthen attended Smith College and received a B.A. degree in 1967, studying under Leonard Baskin. She earned an M.A. degree in 1968 at the University of Iowa, studying under Mauricio Lasansky. Additionally she studied lettering-engraving for silversmiths at Sir John Cass College, from 1986 to 1987.
Her engravings are often architectural.
In 1968, she married art historian and Drake University professor, Thomas Fletcher Worthen. Together they lived part time in Venice, Italy where they restored an apartment in a historic palazzo. She has also spent considerable time in England, France, Japan, Istanbul, and India. She was the first chair of the Iowa-Veneto Sister State Committee, established in 1997.
Her prints are included in the permanent collections of the: Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Cleveland Museum of Art; Iowa State University, Ames; the Van Every Smith Galleries at Davidson College, North Carolina; Grinnell College Museum of Art, Iowa; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art; and Harvard University.