Hi Julie,
Use “otool -l” to check to see how the paths are set in the vtkpython executable. When “make install” runs, the “-delete_rpath” is used to remove any paths that point to the build tree. So it’s strange to see “-delete_rpath /Users/julievon/anaconda2/lib”, since this path is in the install tree. I don’t see anything wrong with your cmake configuration. This could be a conflict of sorts between the VTK that you are installing, and the VTK installed by conda.
You could try restoring the anaconda vtk from backup, and then manually copy just “libvtkRenderingPythonTkWidgets-8.2.dylib” to the “site-packages” within the anaconda directory tree. Here, again, “otool -l” can be used to check to see what libraries it links to.