Historian of Nigerian art and director, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan. Adepegba attended graduate school at Indiana University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1976 in art history under the supervision of Roy Sieber. He pursued an active research agenda writing on a range of Nigerian art topics. His over 40 works include a paper on Nok terracottas, the Yoruba concept of art, and contemporary Nigerian art.

Early writer on modern art in Germany; first to discus African art in aestheric terms and one of the first to connect it to Cubism. Einstein's father was Daniel Einstein (1847-1899), a rabbi, Hebrew teacher and cantor. His mother was Sophie Lichtenstein (Einstein) (b. 1860). In 1888 the family moved to Karlsruhe, where the younger Einstein initially studied Banking. Between 1904-1908 he attended the philosophy lectures of Georg Simmel (1858-1918) at the University of Berlin and art historical lectures of Heinrich Wölfflin.

Curator, art critic, art historian, and educator. Enwezor was born as the youngest son of an Igbo family in Calabar, Nigeria. During the Biafran war of 1967-1970, he and his family were forced to move to the city of Enugu, Nigeria. In 1982, after finishing a semester at the University of Nigeria, Enwezor moved to the Bronx, in New York. In 1987 he earned a B.A. in political sciences at Jersey City State College, now New Jersey City University.

Historian of Yoruban and Nigerian art; Keeper of Ethnology at the British Museum; pioneer in the systematic study of African art. Fagg was the eldest son of an antiquarian book dealer, William Percy Fagg (d. 1939), Lilian Buller (Fagg). He studied Classics at Magdalene College, Cambridge University, graduating in 1936. The following year he received an additional B.A. degree in Archaeology and Anthropology. In 1938 he was appointed Assistant Keeper in the Department of Ethnography at the British Museum, where he spent his entire career.

Modernist art historian, pioneer African arts scholar and director, Museum of Primitive Art, 1957-63. Goldwater was the son of Sigismund S. Goldwater (1873-1942), an M.D. and visionary commissioner of Hospitals in New York under Mayor La Guardia. Goldwater attended Columbia University, receiving his B. A. in 1929. He moved to Harvard for his graduate work, receiving his M.A. in 1931. Goldwater was one of the early art history students to study modern art at Harvard, at the time an area not considered worthy of graduate research. He joined the teaching staff of New York University in 1934.

Africanist historian; associate Professor of History, Mount Holyoke college and social historian of art. Warren was the daughter of Robert Beach Warren and Mildred Fisk (Warren). Her father was an engineer. She attended Wellesley College receiving her B.A. in 1951. She spent the following year as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Vienna, before entering Yale University, graduating with an M.A., 1953. The same year she married fellow graduate student, the art historian Robert L. Herbert, changing her name to Herbert.

Philosopher, journalist, and scholar of African-American art. Alain Locke was born to an African-American couple, Pliny and Mary Hawkins Locke in Philadelphia, Locke was raised in Philadelphia, a popular center for the abolitionists during the Civil War. After his father died in 1891, Locke’s mother focused on developing her son’s intellectual and cultural curiosity. In 1907, Locke received his B.A. in philosophy and literature at Harvard College.

Museum curator and historian of African, Native American, and Oceanic art. Newton was born to English parents on a rubber plantation in Malaysia. Before moving into museum work in the United States in 1956, he worked for the BBC as a journalist and editor. As a curator for the Museum of Primitive Art, Newton designed over sixty-four exhibitions for the museum. His ability to create innovative exhibition designs while remaining sensitive to the problems of displaying non-Western art attracted praise from both art historians and the public.

Early American historian of African art, founder of the discipline of African art history in the United States; Rudy Professor of Fine Arts, Indiana University, 1974-. As a child, Sieber accompanied his parents on trips to Chicago visiting the Art Institute of Chicago and, most importantly for him, the Field Museum where many African artifacts were displayed. He graduated from the New School for Social Research in New York in 1949 guided in his studies by Meyer Schapiro, Rudolf Arnheim, and the artist Mauricio Lasansky.

Historian of art, professor in art education and visual artist. Born in 1916 to Gay Crichton (1855-1966) and Walter Augustus Simon Sr., Simon Jr. grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. Despite the racism prevalent in schools at this time, Simon received an unconventionally thorough education for an African-American, which would serve as a solid foundation for his love of administration in higher education.

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.

Museum director, curator, art historian, and scholar of African art. Williams was born and grew up in Lincoln, Pennsylvania. Her father was a professor of English and dean at Lincoln University. She married Charlton E. Williams (1925-2002) a short time before receiving a B.A. in art history from Oberlin College in 1957. She worked initially for the Museum of Modern Art in New York and then was a secretary for the African-American Institute in Lagos, Nigeria.