Americanist art historian; first associate director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Abbott was born to Arthur Abbott and Flora Parkman (Abbott). After attending Dexter High School, Abbott graduated from Bowdin College with a bachelor's degree in science and attended graduate school at Harvard University in physics. At Harvard he met Alfred H. Barr, Jr., who would become the first director of the Museum of Modern Art. Barr and Abbott spent time in Paris studying art.

Art educator, museum curator and art historian; early exponent of postwar American art to the European public and coiner of the term "pop art." Alloway was the son of a bookseller. As a child he contracted tuberculosis which interrupted his formal education. While a teenager he wrote short "filler" book reviews for the Sunday London Times. He attended classes at the University of London Birbeck night college, but he never received a degree.

Director of the Wadsworth Atheneum, early exponent of modern art in America. Austin was born to wealthy Boston parents, his father was a research, Arthur Everett Austin, Sr.(1861-1938) and his mother, Laura Ann Etnier (Austin) (1864-1944), who was herself independently wealthy. Raised essentially by his mother, Austin attended local grammar schools and visited Europe as a child. Never a good student, he entered Harvard but was asked to leave because of poor grades.

Americanist art historian and professor of art history at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N. J. Baigell graduated undergraduate from the University of Vermont in 1954 and received his M.A. from Columbia University in 1955. He married Renee Moses in 1959. His Ph.D. was awarded at the University of Pennsylvania in 1965. He served in the U.S. Air Force between 1955-57 as lieutenant. Between 1961-65 was an instructor at Ohio State University, advancing to assistant professor, 1965-67, and then associate professor of art, 1967-68.

Americanist and Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1968-74. Baur was the son of a Yale professor of archaeology, Paul V. C. Baur (1872-1951) and mother Susan Whiting. The younger Baur attended Yale, graduating with a B.A. in English in 1932. Finding little teaching work during the height of the depression, he returned to Yale on an art history scholarship. At Yale he studied with Henri Focillon and Marcel Aubert. His 1934 M.A. thesis was on a topic of baroque art.

Americanist art historian and architect. Belknap came to art history comparatively late in his career. His father, of the same name (1873-1943), was a vice president of Bankers Trust. His mother was Rey Sealy Hutchings Belknap (1885-1960). Belknap graduated magna cum laude at St. Paul's School, Concord, NH, in 1916 and attended Harvard University. Although his college years were interrupted by war service, he nevertheless graduated with his class in 1920. Following his father's profession, he worked in various finance and investment firms in New York and London until 1928.

Self-taught historian and critic of American art. Benjamin was born in Argos, Greece in 1837 where his parents were American missionaries. He was educated at the English College in Smyrna, Turkey and Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He graduated from Williams College in 1859 having studied both law and art, also seamanship. During his travels, he gained experience as a maritime painter and illustrator. Benjamin published a series of marine depictions of the Crimean War in the London Illustrated News in 1854. He married Clara Stowell, (d. 1880) in 1863.

Influential scholar of the Italian Renaissance employing connoisseurship; consultant to the major American museums and collectors in the early 20th century. Berenson was born to Albert (originally Alter) Valvrojenski and Julia (originally Eudice) Mickleshanski (Valvrojenski). His father emigrated to Boston from Lithuania with his family in 1875, changing their family name to "Berenson." Bernard Berenson was educated at the Latin School, Boston. A Jew by birth, he converted to Christianity and was baptized in 1885.

UCLA art history professor, 1956-1975; founding director of Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts; Americanist. Bloch was the son of Leonard Bloch and Rose von Auspitz (Bloch). He graduated from New York University with a B.F.A., intent on becoming an artist, in 1939. After a short stint at Harvard University for graduate study in 1940, he returned to NYU and the Institute of Fine Arts, where his A.M. was granted in 1942.

Americanist and art magazine editor; infamous for his anti-modernist stance on American art. Boswell's father Peyton Boswell, Sr. (1879-1936), was an art columnist for the New York Tribune and later founder of the magazine Art Digest. His mother was Bessie Boswell. Boswell attended Rutgers graduating in 1926. The same year, his father founded the journal Art Digest. The younger Boswell worked as a sports journalist in Santa Fe, NM. In 1929 he returned to assumed the assistant art editor position at the Art Digest.

First woman to direct a major American art museum (Baltimore Museum of Art); Cassatt scholar. Breeskin was the daughter of Alfred Robert Louis Dohme (1867-1952) and Emmie Blumner (Dohme). Her father was a chemist who founded the pharmaceutical company Sharpe & Dohme (later Merck, Sharpe & Dohme). The younger Dohme attended the Bryn Mawr preparatory school in Baltimore, initially planning on being an artist. After stints at Bryn Mawr and Radcliffe Colleges, she eventually graduated from Boston's School of Fine Arts, Crafts, and Decorative Design in 1918.

Art museum curator; authority on the folk art of the United States and the arts of Central America; director of the arts division of the WPA. Cahill was born to Bjorn Jonsson and Vigdis Bjarndottir in Iceland but moved with his family shortly after birth to Canada and then North Dakota, USA. Domestic violence and illness broke his family apart and Cahill spent most of his early years working and living in various situations and orphanages in Canada and the United States.

art historian of American art

French and American Impressionist painting scholar; Brown University Professor of Art and Architecture, 1970-2004. Champa was initially interested in music. He studied the trombone in grade school and toured Europe as part of Yale's marching band. In his academic classes at Yale, Champa studied art history. He graduated from Yale with a BA in 1960, continuing at Harvard where he studied with the art critic Clement Greenberg, and wrote his doctoral degree in 1965 under Frederick B. Deknatel in Impressionism.

Director of the Old Slave Mart Museum and scholar of African American art history. Judith Wragg Chase was born in 1907 in Augusta, Georgia, to Samuel Alston Wragg (1875-1953) and Emma Louise Sparks (Wragg) (1877-1966). She attended William Smith College (now Hobart and William Smith Colleges) from 1923-1924. From 1924-1927, she studied at Cooper Union Art School and later completed her degree at Syracuse University in 1960.

Americanist architectural historian of the skyscraper. Condit was the son of Arthur Thomas and Gertrude Pletz (Condit). His father was employed as a teacher in Cincinnati. After attending Walnut Hills High School in the city he entered Purdue University in Indiana studying Mechanical Engineering. He graduated with a BS in that subject in 1936. Condit's interests were stronger in the humanities, however and he returned to Cincinnati and the University there to study English literature. He awarded his A. M. in 1939 and his Ph.D. in 1941. His dissertation topic was on Geoffrey Chaucer.

First American to write a book on the history of art in the United States, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, 1834. Dunlap was the only child of a New Jersey housewares merchant, Samuel Dunlap and his wife, Margaret Sargent (Dunlap). The family moved to New York city in 1777 where the father, a Loyalist, was sought refuge (New York was British headquarters at the time). The younger Dunlap was largely self-educated.

Medievalist and American architectural historian. Egbert was born to Rev. George Drew Egbert (1865-1940) and Kate Estelle Powers (Egbert) (d. 1938); his father was a Congregational minister and collector of early American furniture. The younger Egbert received his B.A. from Princeton University in 1924. He studied architecture, receiving an M.F.A. in 1927. Egbert continued graduate between 1927-1929 under Charles Rufus Morey, who was at that time engaged in cataloging the collection of the Museo Cristiano, part of the Vatican library.

Early American scholar of Chinese art, collector and procurer for American art museums; Chinese governmental adviser. Ferguson was the son of John Ferguson and Catherine Matilda Pomeroy (Ferguson). His father was a Methodist minister and his mother a schoolteacher. The family traveled frequently because of the father's work. Ferguson attended Albert College in Ontario, Canada and then Boston University, where he graduated in 1886. He was ordained in the Methodist Episcopal church shortly thereafter and, in 1887, married Mary Elizabeth Wilson.

Feminist art historian and early scholar of African American art; founded Woman's Art Journal. Elsa Honig was born to Samuel M. Honig and ​​Yetta Susskind (Honig). She earned her Bachelors in Fine Arts from Syracuse University in 1951 and her MEd in art from Temple University's Tyler College of Fine Arts in 1967. She married Harold J. Fine Jr. (d. 2009), a psychologist and psychoanalyst, in 1952.

Journalist and writer on early American art. Flexner was the son of Simon Flexner, a sixth-grade dropout who became a self-taught microbiologist, pathologist, director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York and discoverer of a cure for spinal meningitis. His mother was Helen Thomas [Flexner], a professor of English at Bryn Mawr whose sister was president of the College, and who, through various cousins' marriages, was related to the philosopher Bertrand Russell and Bernard Berenson.

Professor of Architectural History at Tufts University, expert on Boston architecture. In 1953, Floyd graduated from Wellesley College with a B.A. in Art Studies. Four years later, she graduated from the University of New Mexico with a master’s degree in art history. In 1974, she earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from Boston University. Soon after, Floyd became involved in historic preservation, attempting to prevent the destruction of several old buildings, often with the Boston Architectural Center. Floyd would often give walking tours of Boston.

First director of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Rieser moved to Hoboken, N. J., in 1886 with her family. After attending an evangelical boarding school for girls and teaching briefly at a business school, she became the private secretary for Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, heiress to the fortune amassed by Cornelius Vanderbilt. She married Willard Force, a dentist.

Professor of art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and author of a standard history of art textbook. Gardner was the daughter of Charles Frederick Gardner, a tailor and Martha W. Cunningham. In 1891 the family moved to Chicago. Gardner attended Hyde Park High School before the University of Chicago. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa in, honors in Latin and Greek in 1901. She taught at Brooks Classical school in Chicago, serving as assistant principal (her sister was principal) between 1905 to 1910.

Americanist, especially on Abstract Expressionism and particularly Franz Kline. Gaugh graduated from Indiana University in 1960. He initially considered a career in journalism, working as a police and court reporter in Chicago while earning an M.A. in journalism in 1963. He became interested in art history, writing a second M.A. in art history in 1966 and joining the faculty of Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY. A 1972 dissertation on Franz Kline, the first ever, was granted also from Indiana University.