Rapp, Joanne

Joanne Rapp, art educator, art gallery owner, philanthropist, and arts advocate moved to Arizona in 1962 with her husband James, an architecture professor at Arizona State University (ASU). She initially worked as a substitute art teacher for the Scottsdale School system. Within a year, she became the art teacher at Crockett Elementary School in Phoenix, where she was employed for ten years.

Her art curriculum for grades 1 through 8 utilized puppetry. She created a progressive program introducing increasingly complex activities. Beginning with finger puppets, the lessons advanced to making stages for hand, wired and shadow puppets. This culminated with student classroom performances for the lower grades. She also collaborated on the music department’s performances and coordinated the program printmaking.

While teaching, Rapp began collecting puppets and puppetry materials from around the world during her extensive travels. She eventually gave her puppetry teaching and resource materials to Childsplay, a professional theatre for young audiences in Tempe, Arizona.

She left teaching in the 1970s to open a gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, which became known as the Joanne Rapp Gallery/The Hand and the Spirit. She was an ardent proponent of the craft movement in America, championing many new artists working in different media who went on to national prominence. The archive for this gallery resides at the Archives for American Art in Washington, DC.

Rapp is a past Trustee of the American Craft Council, a former member of the Advisory Board for the ASU Art Museum and the Dean’s Council of the ASU College of Fine Arts. In 1996 she received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the ASU College of Fine Arts.

The Rapps have donated their ceramics library to the ASU Ceramics Research Center and items from their personal art collection to the ASU Art Museum.