Cornell and Yale professor of the Italian Renaissance and Michelangelo. Gilbert was the son of Allan H. Gilbert (1888-1976) and Katharine Everett (Gilbert) (1886-1952), both professors at Duke University. His mother was a distinguished aesthetician for whom a dormitory at Duke is named. The younger Gilbert grew up in Durham, NC, attending the public schools (where he learned Latin as a requirement) and various undergraduate colleges including Duke University, 1938-1940, Johns Hopkins University, 1940, and New York University where he received a B.A. in 1942.

Professor of Art and Architecture, Duke University, 1931-1975. Hall received her B.A., from Wellesley College in 1927, continuing for a second bachelor's degree (a B.S.) from MIT in 1930. She traveled to Paris for further study at the Institute of Art and Archaeology in 1931. She returned to the United States and joined the faculty at recently founded Duke University. Her appointment was in the Philosophy department because Duke as yet had no art department. Hall was responsible for the establishment of an art-history curriculum at Duke University.

Northern Renaissance and prints scholar; Princeton University Art Museum curator and professor 1955-1990. Koch was the son of Frederick Henry Koch (1877-1944), a Harvard-educated folklorist and professor of dramatic literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Loretta Jean Hanigan (Koch) [spellings as "Hannigan" are incorrect]. After graduating from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with a B. A.in 1940, Koch continued there for his MA in art history, graduating in 1942. He was then drafted into the Army during World War II, rising to first lieutenant.

Etruscan bronzes scholar; professor University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1968-1979. Hill was the daughter of William Hurd Hill and Emeleen Carlisle (Hill). Her mother's reading to her of a juvenile version of the Odyssey captured the girl's imagination for classical studies. She entered Radcliffe College, where she would obtain all her degrees, receiving an A.B. (in geology), in 1932. After graduation, she went to Athens and the American School of Classical Studies, but a virulent case of amoebic dysentery forced an evacuation to Rome in 1933.

Scholar of the Italian quattrocento; Professor of art history, Duke University 1978-1986. As an eighteen-year-old in 1941, Spencer joined the U.S. Army Air Corps, flying as a bombardier in B-24s during World War II over Vincenza, Italy. Already interested in art, he later quipped that he was likely the only one in his unit who knew what was down there. He helped spare Palladio buildings from U. S. bombs (Newton). After the war, Spencer attended Grinell College, receiving his B. A. in 1947 and a second B.A. from the Universite Laval, Quebec, in 1948.