Anne Militello is a renowned theater and concert lighting designer, architectural and theme park designer, and fine artist. Her designs for the theater span Broadway, Off Broadway, and Regional Theater, including collaborations with Sam Shepard, Maria Irene Fornes, Richard Foreman, Tom Eyen, filmmaker David Lynch, and others.
She has received an OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence in the Off and Off-Off Broadway Theater, an American Theater Wing nomination, several Joseph Jefferson Awards, Dramalogue Awards, Ovation nominations, and others.
Her work on the stage has been seen at Public Theater, Longwharf Theater, ACT, Intar, American Place Theater, McCarter Theater, Mark Taper Forum, La Mama ETC, Milwaukee Rep, Studio Arena Theater, Geffen Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Wallis Annenberg Theater, and others. Her work in opera includes The Los Angeles Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Connecticut Grand Opera, Seattle Opera, Portland Opera, Pittsburg Opera, and Long Beach Opera.
She has designed the international concert tours for Robert Plant, Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Neil Young, kd lang, Josh Groban, and Pearl Jam, among others, on stages which include Radio City Music Hall, Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Staples Center, Queen Victoria Theater, and others.
As a Walt Disney Imagineer, she designed theme park rides and attractions for Disney parks worldwide. She designed the award-winning attraction “The Adventures of Spider-Man” for Universal Studios Orlando for which she received Theme Park Designer of the Year from Lighting Dimensions International Entertainment Design Award and a TEA Award.
As the founder and Principal Designer of Vortex Lighting in Hollywood, she designed the iconic light art installation for the New 42nd Street Studio Building in Times Square. Considered groundbreaking for its original use of digital theatrical light on a landmark architectural façade, she received the prestigious Paul Waterbury Award of Distinction from the Illuminating Engineering Society, the Lumen Award, and an IALD Award of Excellence.
As a lighting artist, her solo show “Radiate - Not Fade Away” was installed at Modern Culture Gallery in New York. Her large-scale light art installation “Light Cycles”, which was commissioned by Arts at Brookfield, was installed at the World Financial Center at the 3 World Trade Center in Battery Park City. Both received international media acclaim including a profile in the New York Times. Her work has also been featured in The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Newsweek, Time Magazine, among others. She was the subject of the BBC Documentary “Interesting People, Interesting Jobs.”
She is the founder and principal of the Hollywood design firm Vortex Lighting, where she leads design teams in an array of architectural projects including hospitality, commercial, retail, and themed projects worldwide. She has been a keynote speaker and lecturer at conferences and symposiums in North America, Europe, and Asia including LDI, NAMM, Greenlight Symposium, and Lightfair, and has led workshops in India for young designers and engineers through the Professional Lighting Designers Association of Europe.
