Social historian, novelist; author of a book on medieval architecture. Adams' parents were the diplomat and congressman Charles Francis Adams, Sr. (1807-1886) and shipping heiress Abigail Brooks Adams (1808-1889); he was the grandson of President John Quincy Adams and great-grandson of President John Adams. Adams attended Dixwell School before Harvard College--an experience he valued little--graduating in 1858. Among his life-long friends he met at Harvard was the future architect Henry Hobson Richardson.

Ground-breaking female director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1982-2008. d'Harnoncourt was born to the Museum of Modern Art, director René d'Harnoncourt and fashion designer Sara Carr (d'Harnoncourt) (1904-2001). Raised in Manhattan, she met artists and museum professionals at an early age. d'Harnoncourt attended the Brearley School before entering Radcliffe, graduating in 1965 magna cum laude.

Expert in Spanish Art. Elizabeth du Gué Trapier was the granddaughter of Paul Trapier (1749-1778), a public official in South Carolina during the American Civil War. After attending college and traveling through Europe, Trapier worked in cataloguing at the Library of Congress of Washington. In 1918, she moved to New York and was selected by the founder, Archer Hilton Huntington (1870-1955), to work at the Hispanic Society. She was first named to be Conservadora de Pintura (Conserver of the Painting) at that institute and began publishing articles on Spanish medieval and modern painting.

Medievalist; chair of the department of Art, Williams College 1940-1969; Nazi-art-crime investigator during World War II. Faison was the son of Samson Lane Faison, Sr., a brigadier general in the United States Army, and Eleanor Sowers Faison (d. 1957). In 1923, at age 16, he visited Chartres cathedral, an event which he said transformed his life. Faison attended Williams College, Williamstown, MA, studying under Karl E. Weston, the chair of the art history department.

First director of the National Gallery of Art, Washgington, D. C., 1938-1956. Finley's father, David Edward Finley, Sr. (1861-1917), moved the family from South Carolina to Washgington, D. C. when Finley was 8, as a new member of Congress. His mother, Elizabeth Gist Finley (1862-1954) was related to Francis Preston Blair (1791-1876) of Blair House fame. Raised in a conservative family (one brother was actually named States Rights Gist Finley) he attended the University of South Carolina, graduating in 1910, continuing to law school at George Washington University, degreed in 1913.

Harvard professor and scholar of the Italian Renaissance. Freedberg attended the Boston Latin School and then Harvard University where he graduated summa cum laude in 1936. He continued to pursue his Ph.D. there studying under Bernard Berenson at Villa I Tatti in Florence. His 1940 dissertation topic was the painting of Parmigianino. When the United States entered World War II the following year, Freedberg commanded an intelligence unit for the United States Army that reported to the British war cabinet.

Smithsonian curator of 19th & 20th century African American Art; Romare Bearden scholar. Carroll Greene was born in 1931 in Washington D.C., and studied at Columbia University and New York University, earning degrees in History and English. Greene’s combining of his passions for African American history and art began in the 1960s while teaching English at NYU and co-curating collections on campus as a hobby.

Temple University professor of Renaissance art. Marcia Brown's father was Charles Edward Brown (1894-1949), a business executive, and mother Frances Peebles [later Ocheltree] (1901-1991). Brown attended Wellesley College, graduating in 1960. She married the Dean of Wellesley's Chapel, Charles Arthur Mann Hall (1924-1990), fifteen years her senior, in 1961, receiving her master's degree from Radcliffe College the following year. Brown, now Hall, was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 1963 to research her dissertation on the late-16th-century renovations to S. Maria Novella and S.

University of Virginia professor and Michelangelo and Italian Renaissance scholar. Hart was raised in Boston, the son of Rollin Lynde Hartt and Jessie Clark Knight (Hartt). He received his B.A. from Columbia University in 1935. After spending a year at the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, under Erwin Panofsky, 1935-1936, he took his M.A. from New York University in 1937. Between 1939 to 1941 Hartt was an instructor in the history of art at Bennett Junior College in Millbrook, New York and then an assistant and cataloger at the Yale Art Gallery (1941-1942).

Archaeologist of classical antiquity; first woman to lead an archaeological excavation in the Aegean. Born Harriett Boyd, her father was Alexander Boyd, a leather merchant, and her mother Harriet Wheeler (Boyd) in 1871, the final of five children and the only girl. Her mother died when she was 10 months old and was raised solely by her father. Boyd received her early education from Prospect Hill School in Massachusetts where she graduated in 1888. From 1892 to 1896 she taught Classics in various schools in both North Carolina and Delaware.

Inventor and physicist; conducted the first classes in architectural history in the United States. Henry was the son of William and Ann Alexander (Henry). His grandparents had been immigrants from Scotland. Henry lived with his maternal grandmother at Galway, NY until he was thirteen when he returned to Albany to live with his widowed mother. He read much at the village library in Galway, particular drama. He joined a group of amateur actors, and there encountered a book on natural sciences. He attended advanced classes of the Albany Academy.

Documentary historian of art. Gilmore was the daughter of Eugene Allen Gilmore, a former Vice Governor General of the Philippines and later President of the University of Iowa. Holt attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison, graduating in 1928. She wrote her master's paper at Radcliffe College in 1930 continuing on to the University of Munich's Kunsthistorisches Institut where she completed her Ph.D., in 1934 with a dissertation (in German) under Wilhelm Pinder on the Augsburg epitaphs. Holt joined the faculty of Duke University in 1934.

Hunter College and Columbia University professor; art critic; co-founder of October magazine. Krauss was the daughter of Matthew M. Epstein and Bertha Luber (Epstein); her father was an attorney. Krauss attended Wellesley College, receiving her B.A. in 1962; the same year she married the architect Richard I. Krauss. She moved to Harvard University where she was awarded an A. M. the following year.

Director of the Freer Gallery, Washington D.C. Lodge was the son of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and a great grandson of George Cabot. He studied at the Boston School and spent two years at Harvard, 1896-98. He also studied in Europe. In 1910 Lodge was appointed curator of the Department of Asiatic Art of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He married Mary Connolly. He became chairman of the committee on oriental art of the Smithsonian Art Commission in 1920. In 1931 Lodge became director of the newly founded Freer Gallery of Art, a position he held until the time of his death.

Architectural historian of classical Rome, professor of art, Smith College, 1965-. MacDonald's father was William Lloyd MacDonald, Sr., and his mother Susan E. Elrod (MacDonald). He served in World War II in the U.S. Army Air Forces, 1942-1945, rising to first lieutenant. Afterward, MacDonald entered Harvard University, receiving his A.B. in 1949. He began lecturing at:Boston Architectural Center in the history of architecture in 1950, continuing for his A.M.at Harvard.

Curator and historian of African-American art. McElroy was the son of Geraldine McElroy (1923-2010) an African-American seamstress, and spent his youth in Fairmont, West Virginia. In 1970, McElroy received a B.A. in art education from Fairmont State College in Fairmont, WV. From 1970 to 1971, he worked as an intern at the Cincinnati Art Museum researching and preparing a catalog essay for an exhibition of paintings by African American landscapist, Robert S. Duncanson (1821-1872). He earned a M.A.

Peale family scholar and early researcher in American arts funding. Born to a Lithuanian immigrant family--her father worked as a butcher in Boston--Lillian Beresnack, graduated magna cum laude from Radcliffe College--the first of her family to attend college--in 1943. She continued on to Columbia University as a graduate student. Having worked her way through college as a secretary, she spent her graduate years as one to Columbia's historian Jacques Barzun (b. 1907) and the literature professor Lionel Trilling (1905-1975).

Museum director and historian of Chinese and Japanese art. Pope received a Ph.D. in Chinese studies and Fine Arts from Harvard University in 1955. He also studied European collections of Chinese art at the Courtald Institute of Art in London, and the Harvard-Yenching Institute. After spending three years as a lecturer of Chinese art at Columbia University, Pope was hired as a research associate at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washgington, D. C., and was appointed its director in 1962.

Art professor and early specialist of African-American art, museum director, and visual artist. Porter was the son of African-American couple John Porter and Lydia Peck Porter. His father was a Christian minister and his mother a schoolteacher. Porter attended public schools in Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D. C., before graduating cum laude with a B.S. in art from Howard University in 1927. He was immediately hired as an instructor of drawing and painting in Howard’s art department.

Museum director and historian of West African art. Ravenhill came to the United States from England as a young child. He received an M.A. (1970) and a Ph.D. (1976) in anthropology from the New School for Social Research in New York. Ravenhill's fieldwork among the Wan peoples of Côte d'Ivoire established his ability to build relationships between West African and American cultural institutions. In 1982, he established and directed the West African Museums Program (WAMP) with financial support from the Ford Foundation.

Art critic and historian of modern American art. Rose attended Smith College undergraduate and then graduate school at Columbia University for her Master's Degree, where she heard lectures of Julius S. Held and the medievalist/modernist Meyer Schapiro among others. (Fearful of Schapiro's reputation on oral examinations, she planned her for the year he was on sabbatical). She met and lived with (future cinematographer) Michael Chapman (b.

Art historian of the baroque era and book publisher. Scribner was book to the book publishing magnate Charles Scribner II (1921-1995) and Joan Sunderland (Scribner), a figure skater. He received all his degrees from Princeton University, including an A.B., (1973) and M.F.A. (1975). His Ph.D., was written under Jack Martin in 1977. Scribner joined his family's publishing firm in 1975 and worked in various capacities. He is currently vice president for special projects. He married Ritchie Harrison Markoe in 1979.

Early Christian and Byzantine art scholar; chair of the Department of Art, University of Chicago and fourth president of the College Art Association, 1929-1938. Shapley was born on the family farm in Missouri and educated in a one-room school house. He graduated from the University of Missouri in 1912. He continued for an M.A. at Princeton University, granted in 1913. While still a student, Shapley and his teacher, John Pickard, helped found the College Art Association, the American professional body of art historians and professional artists. His Ph.D.

Historian of the Italian Renaissance art. Watkins' parents were C. Law Watkins (1886-1945), a coal company owner, and later artist and later art school director, and Mary Bradley Watkins (1911-1993), an artist. Watkins' father was the college roommate of the Washgington, D. C., art collector Duncan Phillips (1886-1966). After selling his interests in a Pennsylvania coal company, his father accepted a position with Phillips as Director of the Phillips Gallery Art School in 1931. Law Bradley Watkins was born a year before his father's death.

Harvard Byzantinist and Egyptologist; discoverer of important mosaics at Hagia Sophia. Whittemore was the son of Joseph Whittemore, a prosperous dealer in real estate and insurance, and Elizabeth St. Clair (Whittemore). His grandfather and namesake was Thomas Whittemore (1800-1861), the famous Cambridge (MA) Universalist minister. Whittemore graduated from Tufts College in Massachusetts in 1894 with a bachelor's degree in English. He remained at his alma mater teaching English for several years and taking graduate courses at Harvard through 1898.