Americanist art historian and founder of the Department of Fine Arts, Fordham University. Irma Blumenthal was the daughter of Harry Blumenthal and Estelle (Levy) Blumenthal. She entered the University of Illinois at 17 but left school her sophomore year to marry Samuel B. Jaffe (d. 1987). Eighteen years later, at the time her daughter entered Radcliffe College in 1954, Jaffe elected to return to college at Columbia University's School of General Studies. She graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa in 1958. She continued to graduate school at Columbia, receiving her M.A. in 1960.

Architectural historian of the Italian Renaissance. Kolb's parents were boths, Bronelle Thomas Kolb, a surgeon, and Agnes Carpenter (Kolb), an anesthesiologist. Her junior year of high school witnessed the famous forced integration of the Little Rock Central Hight School by the national guard through governor Orvil Faubus in 1957. She entered Newcomb College, Tulane University in 1958, where Tulane faculty Jesse Poesch and Alfred Kummer Moir encouraged her interest in art history.

Curator and historian of African-American art; first African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in art history. Lewis was a student at Dillard University in New Orleans, LA, and began her art career there under the tutelage of African-American sculptor and printmaker, Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012). At one of her instructor's suggestions, Lewis transferred to Hampton Institute (now Hampton Univer­sity) in Virginia, where she earned her B.A. in art history in 1945. Lewis completed her graduate studies at Ohio State University, earning her M.A. degree in 1948.