Thomas Toperzer Biography

Thomas Toperzer

American

1939-2024

Biography

 

Thomas Toperzer, painter, printmaker, and museum director, was born in Homestead, Pennsylvania on 17 August 1939. He attended West Liberty State College in West Virginia,  Sterling College in Sterling, Kansas on a football scholarship and then studied at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas where he earned his BA in 1964. Toperzer was a Nell Cochran Woods Trust Fellow in painting and drawing at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, where he received his MFA degree in 1970.

During his long career, Toperzer was director of the Blanden Memorial Art Museum in Iowa; director of the Rochester Art Center in Minnesota; curator of the Center for the Visual Art Gallery at Illinois State University; and director of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma, Mainsite Contemporary Art in Norman. Toperzer was a member of the American Association of Museums, the College Art Association, and the Art Museum Association. He was also an arts consultant to various corporations in Minnesota, Illinois, and Oklahoma.

Thomas Toperzer died in Norman, Oklahoma on 5 July 2024.