Ann O'Connor Williams Harithas (June 12, 1941 – December 23, 2021)[1] was an American philanthropist, museum founder, curator and artist.

[2] Through her mother, she was a descendent of Irish immigrant Thomas O'Connor, who at the time of his death in 1887, was the largest land and cattle owner in Texas.

[5] Years later, Harithas would celebrate her girlhood environs, the site where she felt "most connected to the land and to all of nature," by commissioning a six-channel video installation, Aransas: Axis of Observation, from artist Frank Gillette.

She began with cut paper and continued to make collages, incorporating new techniques such as digital compositing and large format color printing, throughout her life.

[2] The pair would be the Houston art scene's power couple for decades to come, devoting themselves to local and regional artists as well as those working with politically- and socially-engaged content.

[13] In addition to South Texas painter Madeline O'Connor, she counted Hannah Hoch, Lee Miller, Alfonso Ossorio, Jesse Lott, Susan Plum, Mel Chin and Travis Whitfield among her influences.

In The Art of Found Objects: Interviews with Texas Artists, she told author Robert Craig Bunch, "Both Kachinas and the other religious components of my collages speak to essential and intimate spirituality, and each person who views the work has their own way of relating to this.

[9] Two years earlier, the Harithases met Larry Fuente, one of the Bay Area's premier "glue artists," a counterculture junk art movement in which small found objects were used to decorate larger ones.

In Ancient Roots/New Visions, a show at The University of Houston's Blaffer Gallery, Fuente was represented by a toilet decorated with hundreds of beads, paste gems and a large statuette of the Virgin Mary.

The 1960 Cadillac Sedan de Ville was encrusted with millions of beads and faux jewels; swan, duck and flamingo figurines; action figures; shoe soles and plastic horses, which resulted in a surprisingly elegant, if over the top, construction.

[26] The opening show, Noah Edmundson's Lost Worlds: New Drawings and Sculpture coincided with an art car parade through downtown Victoria.

[26] Exhibitions at the Five Points largely involve art cars, but the museum has hosted work by some of Harithas' favorite activist artists.

By assembling collages from family photos and images of her injured brain,[33] her faculties improved and she made a full recovery.

[34] Ann's last curatorial endeavor was the mounting of the major museum show Mel Chin: Points of View held in conjunction with his large-scale public installation Wake in downtown Victoria (2021-2022).