Frank Lloyd Wright Sr. was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements of the twentieth century, influencing architects worldwide through his works and mentoring hundreds of apprentices in his Taliesin Fellowship. Wright believed in designing in harmony with humanity and the environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was exemplified in Fallingwater (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture".
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American poet, author, and teacher. Her work often dealt with the personal celebrations and struggles of ordinary people in her community. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on May 1, 1950, for Annie Allen, making her the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize.
Mary Beth Norton is an American historian, specializing in American colonial history and well known for her work on women's history and the Salem witch trials. She is the Mary Donlon Alger Professor Emeritus of American History at the Department of History at Cornell University. Norton served as president of the American Historical Association in 2018. She is a recipient of the Ambassador Book Award in American Studies for In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. Norton received her Bachelor of Arts at the University of Michigan (1964). The next year she completed a Master of Arts, going on to receive her Ph.D. in 1969 at Harvard University. She identifies as a Democrat and she considers herself a Methodist. Mary Beth Norton is a pioneer of women historians not only in the United States but also in the whole world, as she was the first woman to get a job in the department of history at Cornell University.
Pauline Alice Maier was a revisionist historian of the American Revolution, whose work also addressed the late colonial period and the history of the United States after the end of the Revolutionary War. She was the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of American History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Terry Smith is an Australian art historian, art critic and artist who currently lives and works in Pittsburgh, New York and Sydney.
Beatriz Colomina is an architecture historian, theorist and curator. She is the founding director of the Program in Media and Modernity at Princeton University, the Howard Crosby Butler Professor of the History of Architecture and director of graduate studies in the School of Architecture.
Robert Bruegmann is an historian of architecture, landscape and the built environment. He is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a specialist on the Chicago school of architecture. Bruegmann is best known for his research on the architectural firm of Holabird & Root, and is also a commentator on urban sprawl.
Olgivanna Lloyd Wright was the third and final wife of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. They first met in November 1924 and married in 1928. In 1932, the couple established Wright's architectural apprentice program and Taliesin Fellowship. In 1940, Olgivanna and Frank, along with their son-in-law William Wesley Peters, co-founded the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Following her husband's death in 1959, Olgivanna assumed the role of President of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, a position she held until a month prior to her death in 1985.
Barbara Chase-Riboud is an American visual artist and sculptor, novelist, and poet.
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall was an American historian who focused on the history of slavery in the Caribbean, Latin America, Louisiana, Africa, and the African Diaspora in the Americas. Discovering extensive French and Spanish colonial documents related to the slave trade in Louisiana, she wrote Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (1992), studied the ethnic origins of enslaved Africans brought to Louisiana, as well as the process of creolization, which created new cultures. She changed the way in which several related disciplines are researched and taught, adding to scholarly understanding of the diverse origins of cultures throughout the Americas.
Geeta Kapur is a noted Indian art critic, art historian and curator based in New Delhi. She was one of the pioneers of critical art writing in India, and who, as Indian Express noted, has "dominated the field of Indian contemporary art theory for three decades now". Her writings include artists' monographs, exhibition catalogues, books, and sets of widely anthologized essays on art, film, and cultural theory.
Gauvin Alexander Bailey is an American-Canadian author and art historian. He is Professor and Alfred and Isabel Bader Chair in Southern Baroque Art at Queen's University.
Teresa Gisbert Carbonell de Mesa was a Bolivian architect and art historian. She specialized in the history of the Andean region.
Hillside Home School I, also known as the Hillside Home Building, was a Shingle Style building that architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed in 1887 for his aunts, Ellen and Jane Lloyd Jones for their Hillside Home School in the town of Wyoming, Wisconsin. The building functioned as a dormitory and library. Wright had the building demolished in 1950.
Pamela H. Smith is an American historian of science specializing in attitudes to nature in early modern Europe (1350-1700), with particular attention to craft knowledge and the role of craftspeople in the Scientific Revolution. She is the Seth Low Professor of History, founding director of the Making and Knowing Project, founding director of the Center for Science and Society, and chair of the Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience, all at Columbia University. Smith is serving a two-year term (2016-2018) as president of the Renaissance Society of America.
Sussan Babaie is an Iranian-born art historian and curator. She is best known for her work on Persian art and Islamic art of the early modern period. She has written extensively on the art and architecture of the Safavid dynasty. Her research takes a multidisciplinary approach and explores topics such as urbanism, empire studies, transcultural visuality and notions of exoticism. In her work as a curator, Babaie has worked on exhibitions at the Sackler Museum of Harvard University (2010), the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and the Smith College Museum of Art (1998).
D. (Dede) Fairchild Ruggles is a historian of Islamic art and architecture, and a professor in the University of Illinois Department of Landscape Architecture. She is known for her books on Islamic gardens and landscapes, her series of edited volumes on cultural heritage, and her award-winning work in gender history.
Maurie D. McInnis is an American author and cultural historian. She currently serves as the 24th president of Yale University, succeeding Peter Salovey on July 1, 2024. She previously served as the sixth president of Stony Brook University.
Rachel Meredith Kousser is professor of art history at the City University of New York.
Tapati Guha-Thakurta is an Indian historian who has written about the cultural history and art of India. She is a director and professor in history at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and was previously a professor at Presidency College, Kolkata. Her extensive research work on Kolkata's Durga Puja led to its inclusion in UNESCOs Intangible Cultural Heritage list.
