Dr. Ann Bronwyn Paulk

Dr. Ann Bronwyn (Thummel) Paulk, Ph.D., art historian and college professor, was born November 13, 1947 and passed away on March 8, 2026. She is survived by her husband, Steve Bigler; her three children, Meghan Paulk Ingle, Charlie Paulk, and Allison Paulk; her four grandchildren, Wyatt Ingle, Veronica Ingle, Alexander Harmon, and Aaron Harmon; and her brother, Craig Thummel; and sister, Kris Plank. Ann left us much too soon, but in time to miss the last three years of the Trump presidency, and she would be happy to be spared that, at least. In 2009, a student who took one of Ann's classes at Hamline University posted on the website Rate My Professors: "Thanks to Ann, I learned to appreciate modern art. If you're not afraid of hard work, take this class." That's a legacy that would make Ann proud.

Brilliant and beautiful and kind, Ann achieved varied and impressive things over the course of her lifetime. She earned her Ph.D., becoming an expert on the artist Thomas Eakins. She taught at multiple esteemed colleges, including Hamline, Denison University, and Beloit College. She encouraged her three children to read, banning TV at their lake cabin and curating a library of quirky books for them to peruse instead. All three children went on to earn advanced degrees. Ann dabbled in freelance writing and sold a humor piece to an internationally published women's magazine, which helped inspire her older daughter to become an author. Ann loved animals and spent countless hours taking her younger daughter to horse stables and horse shows. She traveled extensively across Europe with her second husband, painter Steven Bigler, and developed a particular love for Italy. Her passion for art, books, and movies never dimmed. If you visited her condo in St. Paul, Minnesota in recent years, you were likely to leave with a Cormac McCarthy novel in hand that you "simply must read."

A tough competitor, Ann never believed in "letting" children win at games, not even her beloved grandchildren. "How else are they ever going to learn?" she would ask. Her children inherited her competitive streak, resulting in an infamous Paulk family game of Survive! that caused their father to summarily ban "board game night." Eventually, the board games would go on and they continued to be an activity enjoyed by Ann and all her family members in the Thummel, Paulk, and Bigler clans. During family holidays and vacations at the lake cabins, Pictionary, Scrabble, and Trivial Pursuit were always on the agenda.
Ann grew up in Harlan, a picturesque small town in western Iowa. Her father, Glenn, ran the Savings & Loan and her mother, Vera, taught speech at the high school and wrote an Erma Bombeck-style column for the local newspaper. As a kid, Ann excelled in ballet and loved horseback riding. She dreamed of becoming an equestrian. But Ann also loved art and, once she enrolled at the University of Iowa, that became her focus.

In 1969, Ann married Stephen Paulk, a medical student at the University of Iowa who had been her high-school sweetheart. Their first child, Meghan, was born one year later. After Meghan's birth, Ann taught art at grade schools while Stephen's medical residency took the small family from Iowa City to Minneapolis and then to Rochester, Minnesota before they finally returned to Iowa City in 1976. As a mom, Ann continued to exercise her creativity-making Halloween costumes for Meghan, tie-dying curtains for their apartment, and embroidering denim, as was the fashion at the time.

On November 23, 1976, Ann and Stephen's second child, Charlie, was born. A few years later, the family moved to Waterloo, Iowa. In 1980, Stephen and Ann bought a cabin on Blanche Lake in Minnesota. The Minnesota lakes area remained one of Ann's favorite places throughout her life. She spent many happy summers at Blanche Lake and later at Little Pine Lake where Steve Bigler and his family have a cabin. She loved to sail, pedal boat, and waterski.

On September 22, 1980, Ann's third child, Allison, was born. While her kids were in school, Ann became involved in the local arts community. She taught classes and helped curate exhibits at the Waterloo Center for the Arts. She based one of her popular classes for children on the illustrated book The 14 th Dragon, which presents readers with verse and varied illustrations about thirteen dragons, leaving the fourteenth dragon to the readers' imaginations.

In 1988, the family got a Bernese Mountain dog that they named "Itasca" after the Minnesota state park that they'd frequently visited over the years. Sweet-natured Itasca (called "Tasca," for short) became Ann's all-time favorite family pet. For the rest of her life, Ann adored nything with a Bernese Mountain Dog on it.

In the early '90s, Ann did a series of guest lectures at the University of Northern Iowa and met her second husband, Steve Bigler, who was a professor in the Art Department there. In 1996, Ann earned her Master of Arts degree in Art History at the University of Iowa. Six years later, in 2002, she completed her Ph.D. The subject of her dissertation was "Thomas Eakins and antiheroic modernism." Ann went on to teach in the Art Department at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, at Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin, and then at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She retired from Hamline in 2017.

Although Ann enjoyed visiting her family in Texas and traveling Europe, she remained a true Midwesterner at heart. One of her favorite things growing up had been visits to her grandparents' farm. She always loved the change of seasons. Ann adored the St. Paul neighborhood where she and Steve lived, and she enjoyed taking long walks with Steve, showing guests the historic areas (such as the place where F. Scott Fitzgerald had once dwelled), and stopping at other local landmarks such as Nina's coffee café.

Ann's family, her many friends, and her students were fortunate to know her and to learn from her. She is deeply loved and is dearly missed.