Americanist art historian; first associate director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Abbott was born to Arthur Abbott and Flora Parkman (Abbott). After attending Dexter High School, Abbott graduated from Bowdin College with a bachelor's degree in science and attended graduate school at Harvard University in physics. At Harvard he met Alfred H. Barr, Jr., who would become the first director of the Museum of Modern Art. Barr and Abbott spent time in Paris studying art.

Art educator, museum curator and art historian; early exponent of postwar American art to the European public and coiner of the term "pop art." Alloway was the son of a bookseller. As a child he contracted tuberculosis which interrupted his formal education. While a teenager he wrote short "filler" book reviews for the Sunday London Times. He attended classes at the University of London Birbeck night college, but he never received a degree.

Modernist. Art historian of Bolognese and Emilian art from the fourteenth century to the contemporary; critic. Arcangeli was born to Adolfo and Maria Villani. He was one of four siblings, all of whom were creative. Gaetano was a poet and humanities professor, Nino was a musician, and Bianca was a painter. Arcangeli began his studies at the University of Bologna in 1933 where he studied under the respected art historian and critic Roberto Longhi, Professor of Art History and chair in History of Medieval and Modern Art.

Historian of art, educator, and curator who specialized in art of the Caribbean.

Director of the Walker Art Center 1951-1961; wrote a popular survey of modern art. Arnason was born to Sveinbjorn and Maria Bjarnadottir (Arnason), Icelandic immigrants to Canada. He attended the University of Manitoba for two years (1925-1927) before immigrating to the United States. There he attended Northwestern University, achieving his B.S. in 1931. In 1936 he married Elizabeth Hickox Yard and taught as an instructor. After gaining his A.M. in 1937, Arnason continued to study art at Princeton University where he was awarded an M.F.A. in 1939. He was made a naturalized citizen in 1940.

Director of the Wadsworth Atheneum, early exponent of modern art in America. Austin was born to wealthy Boston parents, his father was a research, Arthur Everett Austin, Sr.(1861-1938) and his mother, Laura Ann Etnier (Austin) (1864-1944), who was herself independently wealthy. Raised essentially by his mother, Austin attended local grammar schools and visited Europe as a child. Never a good student, he entered Harvard but was asked to leave because of poor grades.

Private scholar; art historian of the baroque and modern periods; methodological theorist. Badt was born to a prosperous Banking family in Berlin. His father, Leopold Badt (1858-1929) raised his children in a rarefied cultural atmosphere, giving them every opportunity to experience art. The younger Badt attended the Berlin-Charlottenburg Reformgymnasium, graduating in 1906. Between 1909-1914 he studied art history and philosophy at the universities of Berlin, Munich and finally at Freiburg (im Breisgau) under Wilhelm Vöge.

Maverick architectural theorist and historian; modernism and pop-culture revisionist. Banham's parents were Percy Banham, a gas engineer, and Violet Reyner (Banham). The younger Banham was educated at King Edward VI School, Norwich, UK. Too young to join the military during World War II, he worked as an engine fitter at the Bristol Aeroplane Company. Banham entered the Courtauld Institute of London University in 1945 to study art history. He married Mary Mullett the following year.

Founder, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Barr was the son of a Presbyterian minister, Alfred Hamilton Barr, Sr., and a homemaker Annie Elizabeth Wilson (Barr). The family moved to Baltimore where Barr was raised. His childhood friends included Edward Stauffer King, later director of the Walters Art Gallery. Barr graduated at age 16 (valedictorian) from high school and entered Princeton University in 1918. At that the same year he read Henry Adam's Mont Saint Michel and Chartres influencing him toward art history.

Americanist and Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1968-74. Baur was the son of a Yale professor of archaeology, Paul V. C. Baur (1872-1951) and mother Susan Whiting. The younger Baur attended Yale, graduating with a B.A. in English in 1932. Finding little teaching work during the height of the depression, he returned to Yale on an art history scholarship. At Yale he studied with Henri Focillon and Marcel Aubert. His 1934 M.A. thesis was on a topic of baroque art.

Modernist art historian and art librarian, professor University of Kansas. Berger studied art history under Heinrich Wölfflin, Adolph Goldschmidt, Georg Vitzthum von Eckstädt and Paul Frankl at the respective universities of Munich, Berlin, Heidelberg and Göttingen. He completed his dissertation under Moritz Geiger in aesthetics at Göttingen in 1925, his topic addressing Wölfflin's methodology.

Director of several major North American art museums and Degas scholar. Boggs was the daughter of Oliver Desmond Boggs and Humia Marguerite Sutherland (Boggs). She was raised in Canada. Boggs studied at the University of Toronto, receiving her B.A. in 1942. She continued to Radcliffe College for her A.M. in 1947. She worked briefly at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in the 1940s as well. While completing her Ph.D., she taught at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, as an assistant professor of art, 1948-1949 and then Mount Holyoke College, with the same rank, 1949-1952.

Byzantine and Russian art specialist, later historian of 19th- and 20th-century painting (U.S. career). Born was born in Breslau, Silesia, Prussia, which is present-day Wroclaw, Poland. Born's parents were Gustav Born (1850-1900), a professor of anatomy and embryology at the University in Breslau, and Berthe Lipstein (Born). Born served in World War I in the sanitary corps. After the war he married Susi Bial in 1918 studying studio art at schools between 1919-1923 in Munich and under Édouard Vuillard in Paris.

Americanist and art magazine editor; infamous for his anti-modernist stance on American art. He was born in Long Island, NY, USA, in Malverne. Boswell's father Peyton Boswell, Sr. (1879-1936), was an art columnist for the New York Tribune and later founder of the magazine Art Digest. His mother was Bessie Boswell. Boswell attended Rutgers graduating in 1926. The same year, his father founded the journal Art Digest. The younger Boswell worked as a sports journalist in Santa Fe, NM.

Modern art champion in Germany, first director of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg. He married Ida Laura Anna Marie von Froschauer in 1868. Plans for the museum were formulated from 1873 to 1875 thorugh a design of Carl Johann Christian Zimmermann. The Museum was opened in 1877, located on Steintorplatz, officially known as the Staatliches Technikum und Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (State Center for Technology and Msueum of Fine and Useful Arts). Brinckmann collected a wide range of objects for the museum, from Renaissance painting to Viennese furniture to Japanese prints.

Italian art historian and Professor of medieval and modern art at University of Turin and University of Milan; Scholar of Leonardo da Vinci.

Art dealer, art historian, and a pioneer as a woman in the field. Lillian Browse was born in London to Michael Browse and Gladys Amy Browse (née Meredith). At three, she emigrated with her family to South Africa, where her father had launched a career as a racehorse trainer. She attended Barnato Park High School in Johannesburg, then returned to London in 1928 in order to study ballet at the Cecchetti Ballet School. While on tour in 1930, she realized that she would not achieve the success she desired as a dancer and decided to switch careers.

Modernist art historian; partner with Claes Oldenburg in artworks, 1977-2009. Bruggen's father was a medical doctor who held weekly salons for writers and painters at their home where she and her siblings participated. She studied art history at the Rijks University of Groningen, earning a graduate degree in 1967. Bruggen joined the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam the same year as a curator. She worked with conceptual artists Doug Wheeler, Larry Bell, Jan Dibbets and Ger van Elk, marrying around this time.

Curator and Director of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna di Roma, (National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome) 1942-1975; first woman art museum director in Italy. Bucarelli studied art history at the University of Rome under Adolfo Venturi and Pietro Toesca. After graduation, she joined the department of Antiquities and Fine Arts, part of the Ministry of Education. She remained at the department as fascism overtook Italy. At the height of World War II, she assumed the directorship of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome, in 1942.

Medievalist and modernist, Albers scholar. Bucher was born to Aloïs Bucher and Gabrielle Zundel (Bucher). He attended the Zürich Gymnasium Zürich, receiving a B.A., in 1947. After additional graduate study at the universities of Zürich and Rome, Bucher began teaching as a lecturer at the University of Bern, Switzerland in 1952, continuing to work on his Ph.D. He emigrated to the United States where he taught, also as an instructor, at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis between 1953 and 1954. In 1954 he married Elizabeth R.

Artist and professor of art history at the Universities of Heidelberg, Strasbourg, and Munich; exponent of 20th-century art and founder of the modern art-historical encyclopedia. Burger was the son of a banker. He started architectural studies in 1896 in Munich, but cut them short for enrollment in the military the following year. From 1900 onward, he studied art history in Heidelberg. The new art movement of Darmstadt became the subject of his first publication in 1902. He married the daughter of the Heidelberg classicist Friedrich von Duhn the same year.

First curator of modern art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1946-1952. Byrnes studied to be an artist at various New York city schools including the National Academy of Design, 1936-1938, the American Artists School, 1938-1940 and the Art Students League, 1941-1942. After World War II he was hired at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to be its first Curator of Modern and Contemporary art in 1946. He taught as a visiting professor at the University of Southern California before attending the University of Perugia and Istituto Meschini, Rome, the latter, 1951-1952.

Art historian and dealer, responsible for many sensational painting discoveries in the post-World-War II period. Carritt was educated at Rugby School 1939-44 before attending Christ Church College, Oxford. While still at school he drew the attention of Benedict Nicolson, then editor of the Burlington Magazine, as someone which extraordinary art-historical perceptiveness. Nicholson took Carritt to visit the great Italian art authority, Bernard Berenson in Florence, who also was impressed with the Carritt's gifts.

Historian of modern sculpture and ancient Greece; studied effect of technique upon style in Greek art. Casson attended Merchant Taylors School and Lincoln and St. John's College, Oxford, initially studying anthropology before changing to archaeology. His major area was Hellenism. He was appointed assistant director of the British School in Athens in 1919, which he held until 1922. As editor of the Catalogue of the Acropolis Museum, the set appeared the same year. In 1927 he was made a reader at Oxford University. He was Special Lecturer in Art, Bristol University in 1931.