From 1964 to 1975, she was employed by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she quickly rose to become dean of students, a position that tempered her spirit and tested her diplomatic skills as she dealt with students involved in the heady days of the late 1960s, including the protests around the Democratic Convention of 1968.
With the Stevens Fellowship, Ann Stewart spent a year in Egypt working on a photographic project, finding scenes of daily life from modern-day Cairo and Egyptian villages (plowing, planting, harvesting; making beer and bread and mud-bricks; plucking ducks; fishing with nets in the river delta) that mirrored those depicted in Pharaonic-era tomb paintings from 3, 000 years ago.
[5] In 1985, she collaborated on an NEA-funded project called Hot Flash Fan with the feminist artist Judy Chicago, a giant multi-media project addressing menopause that included work by over 50 artists.
[6] A 60-year retrospective exhibition of her work, "Looking Back/Moving Forward," was mounted at PYRO Art Gallery in Louisville in 2009.
[7] 2002: Individual Grant, The Kentucky Foundation for Women, 1998: Professional Development Grant, Kentucky Arts Commission, 1998: Sallie Bingham Award, Kentucky Foundation for Women, 1991: Southern Arts Federation, New Forms Regional Initiative Grant, 1988: Purchase Award, Kentucky Graphics, 1987: Individual Grant, The Kentucky Foundation for Women, 1986: Charles Logan Memorial Prize, Water Tower Art Association, Water Tower Annual, 1985: Robert Cooke Enlow Memorial Purchase Award, Evansville Museum of Art and Science, 1975: Mary Elvira Stevens Traveling Fellowship, Wellesley College, [8] Citizens Bank, Glasgow KY; Homequity Wilton, CT; Drake Hotel, Chicago; Turtle Wax Company, Chicago; Brown Foreman Distillers; Atlantic Richfield Corporation; Alabama Power Company; Colwell Financial; Central Bank, Lexington; Hilliard Lyons, Louisville; University of Kentucky Art Museum [9] [9]