American scholar of Etruscan art. Hall graduated from Smith College in 1899 and attended graduate school at Bryn Mawr. In 1903 received a fellowship via Bryn Mawr to the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. At the School, she was invited to participate on the expedition to Gournia, part of the "Wells-Houston-Cramp Expeditions" (1901-1904) led by the archaeologist Harriet Boyd Hawes (1871-1945). After returning to Bryn Mawr in 1905, she wrote her dissertation on the decorative bronze-age art of Crete in 1908. She was hired at Mount Holyoke College in the same year.

Medievalist art historian, particularly the Romanesque, and theorist. Focillon's father was the engraver and occasional salon reviewer Victor-Louis Focillon (1849-1918). The younger Focillon grew up amidst the artists Edouard Vuillard and Auguste Rodin and the early documenter of Impressionism, Gustave Geffroy. His early schooling was in Paris at the Lycée Charlemagne and Lycée Henri IV. As a young man he helped Geffroy write first volume of Geffroy's series Les Musées d'Europe (The Museums of Europe) in 1900.

Archaeologist and architectural historian: first curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1882-1888, and later curator of Art at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. Goodyear was the son of Charles A. Goodyear (1800-1860), the famous inventor of the rubber vulcanization process, and Clarissa Beecher (Goodyear). Much of his childhood was spent in England and France. He graduated in 1867 from Yale University with a degree in history, moving to Italy to seek a better clime for his health. There he became interested in antiquities.

Manet and Futurism scholar; first female full-professor in at Yale University. Coffin's parents were Francis Joseph Coffin, an Episcopal minister and Annie Coffin. She studied at Skidmore College, switching to the University of Southern California, marrying Warfield Garson in 1942 and graduating the following year with a BFA in studio art. She and Warfield began a family. After her children were born, she lectured at Wagner College, Staten Island, NY, for the academic year 1949-1950.

American historian of architecture whose research ranged from an initial focus on the Italian Renaissance to evolutionary theory and computer modelling. Hersey was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Milton Leonard Hersey (1899-1983), an economist, and Katharine Hersey (Page) (1896-1991). After graduating from high school in 1945, Hersey joined the merchant marine where he assisted in transporting troops home after World War II. Following this, Hersey joined the U.S. Army, where he advised returning war veterans in planning for their future.

Architectural historian of 17th to 19th century Europe at Yale. Meeks was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1907, the son of Joseph Vanderslice Meeks. He received a Ph.B. degree from Yale University in 1928. Meeks joined the faculty at Yale — where he would spend his entire teaching career — as an assistant in architecture in 1930. He earned a B.F.A. in 1931 and an M.A. in 1934, both at Yale. In the same year, he was married to Carol Silvester and was appointed Assistant Professor of art in 1937. Throughout his career at Yale, Everett V.

Historian of caricature and American artists; wrote an early survey of the graphic caricature art. Fisher was the son of William S. Fisher and Eva Murrell. In 1905, at age 15, Fisher emigrated with his younger brother to New York from Liverpool, his parents having gone before him. Even at this age, Fisher exhibited from some level of paralysis on his body and was throughout his life considered an invalid. The painter Alexander Brooke later described him as spastic.

Dura Europos scholar; social- and art historian. Rostovtzeff's father, Ivan Yakovlevich Rostovtzveff, was a teacher of classical languages from whom the younger Rostovtzeff also learned. He continued study at the university in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he heard lectures by the Byzantinist Nikodim Pavlovich Kondakov. Rostovtzeff wrote his college thesis in 1892 on Pompeii, continuing to study during a three-year trip to the near east and Europe.

Yale architectural historian. Scully was born to a modest family in New Haven, a city in which he remained his entire life. After graduating from high school at 15, he entered Yale University with a scholarship in 1936. At Yale, the lectures of Chauncey B. Tinker (1876-1963) caught his interest and he began graduate work in English. He quit after only one semester (citing a distain for the New Criticism that had gripped academic English departments). After failing to make the Army Flying Cadets, he joined the U. S.

Yale University professor of art history; renaissance and sculpture specialist. Seymour's paternal family comprised many Yale faculty. His father was Charles Seymour (1885-1963), president of Yale 1937-50. The younger Seymour attended the Choate School and a year at King's College, Cambridge University, before entering Yale in the class of 1935. At Yale he studied under Marcel Aubert and particularly Henri Focillon.

Curator and early historian of African and African-American art. Thompson was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, by his father, a surgeon, and his mother, a local arts patron. He grew to appreciate the cultures on either side of the border with Mexico. On a trip to Mexico City during his last year of high school, Thompson first heard mambo, a genre of Cuban dance music. This experience sparked what would become a lifelong passion for Afro-Atlantic music, dance, visual arts, and culture.