She was the first woman to be hired as a fully tenured professor, serve as president of the College Art Association, and department chair at Yale University.
She then attended the University of Southern California for her bachelor of fine arts degree in painting and married Warfield Garson before graduating.
[1] She studied at the Arts Students League in New York City between 1944 and 1945 and enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for her master's degree in painting.
[2] Upon completing her MFA, and divorcing her first husband, Coffin Hanson taught at Princeton Day School between 1952 and 1955 and at the University of Buffalo.
[1] Due to her background in painting, she accepted a tentative teaching assistant position at Bryn Mawr College's graduate school while also learning Italian to complete a study in Florence for her PhD thesis on Jacopo della Quercia's Fonte Gaia.