In 2021, Tom Savage was appointed director of educational travel and conferences for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, following a sixteen-year career at Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library as director of museum affairs and director of external affairs. From 1998 to 2005, he was senior vice president and director of Sotheby’s Institute of Art, where he directed Sotheby’s American Arts Course, and from 1981 to 1998 he served as curator and director of museums of the Historic Charleston Foundation. A native of Virginia, Savage received a BA in art history from the College of William and Mary and a master’s degree in history museum studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program of the State University of New York. Savage currently serves on the board of governors of the Decorative Arts Trust. He is a former trustee of the Royal Oak Foundation, the Attingham Summer School, and the Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation. In addition, he served as a presidential appointee to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House from 1993 to 2002.

A New Orleans native, John H. Lawrence was responsible for building the extensive photographic holdings at HNOC, where he worked for 46 years before retiring as director of museum programs at the end of 2020. As HNOC’s head of curatorial collections, Lawrence oversaw holdings numbering more than half a million items. He has written and lectured widely about contemporary and historic photography and about the administration and preservation of pictorial collections, and he has curated dozens of exhibitions on a wide range of photographic, artistic, and general historical topics. His latest publication is the HNOC book Louisiana Lens: Photographs from the Historic New Orleans Collection.  

Lydia Blackmore is the decorative arts curator at the Historic New Orleans Collection. She earned an MA and certificate in museum studies from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware; she also holds a degree in history from the College of William and Mary. As curator, Blackmore oversees research, acquisition, and preservation of decorative and fine art collections. She manages the Decorative Arts of the Gulf South project and is coordinating preservation projects at the historic 533 Royal Street campus. In eleven years at HNOC, Blackmore has curated or cocurated several exhibitions, including Making Mardi Gras (2022), A Vanishing Bounty (2024), and Unknown Sitters (2024). Outside of HNOC, she is a member of the board of trustees of the Historic BK House & Gardens. 

Roger W. Moss, director emeritus of the Athenæum of Philadelphia, taught a course on historic mechanical systems in the preservation program of the University of Pennsylvania for twenty-five years and wrote Lighting for Historic Buildings (2000) for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Moss is the author of many books on architecture and design, including Victorian Exterior Decoration: How to Paint Your Nineteenth-Century American House Historically (1987) and Victorian Interior Decoration: American Interiors, 183 0–1900 (1986), which he co-authored with his wife, Gail Caskey Winkler.

Sumpter T. Priddy III holds an undergraduate degree in the history of architecture from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree from the Winterthur Program in Early American Material Culture. He served as a tutor for Historic Deerfield’s Summer Fellowship Program in 1976 and as curator for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation from 1978 to 1983. He currently operates a gallery specializing in early American antiques and fine art in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. For a quarter century, he has researched, lectured, and published about material culture created by artists and artisans of the pre-industrial South and their impact upon southern culture. Priddy’s book and traveling exhibition American Fancy: Exuberance in the Arts, 1790–1840, was sponsored by the Chipstone Foundation; the book won Historic New England’s 2004 Book Prize. Priddy’s most recent article—co-authored with Jenna Huffman and fellow New Orleans Antiques Forum speaker Adam T. Erby—appears in the journal American Furniture and explores previously unknown documentation that illuminates the arrival of the first Campeachy chairs at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.

Kelly Conway was appointed curator of American glass at the Corning Museum of Glass (CMOG) in 2013. Previously, she was the Carolyn and Richard Barry Curator of Glass at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, from 2007 to 2013. There, she curated several special exhibitions and was a key member of the team that established a hot glass studio at the museum in 2011. Conway also led the design and reinstallation of the new glass collection gallery at the Chrysler. Conway is currently working on several projects at CMOG, including a grant-funded project on American brilliant cut glass, a special exhibition on the mosaic production of Louis Comfort Tiffany, and a new book interpreting American history through the glass collection. Conway received a master’s degree in the history of decorative arts at the Smithsonian Institution and Parsons School of Design and a bachelor of arts degree in American history from DePauw University. She lectures extensively on the history of glass and is a member of the International Council of Museums as well as the Association of Art Museum Curators. She is on the board of directors of the Glass Art Society.

John Stuart Gordon is Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts at Yale University Art Gallery. He received a bachelor of arts degree from Vassar College, a master of arts degree from the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, and a PhD from Boston University. Gordon works in all areas of American decorative arts and has written on topics ranging from the stained glass windows of John La Farge to the ceramics of Robert Arneson. His 2011 publication, A Modern World: American Design from the Yale University Art Gallery, 1920–1950, explores the first decades of modern design in the United States, and he is currently writing a book on American glass in Yale’s collections. In addition to his curatorial work, Gordon supervises the American Decorative Arts Furniture Study, Yale University Art Gallery’s expansive study collection of American furniture and wooden objects, and teaches the history of American silver.

Nick Dawes grew up in the English Midlands in an antiques-dealing family during the days when a grandfather clock cost a fiver. He emigrated to New York in 1979 and has pursued a career as an auctioneer, antiques dealer, lecturer, and author. Dawes was formerly an auctioneer and department head at Phillips and at Sotheby’s in New York, and is currently at Heritage Auctions. He is considered this country’s leading expert on the work of René Lalique and curated the first important touring American museum exhibition on the subject in 1989. He is also a nationally recognized expert on Victorian and earlier ceramics and decorative arts. Dawes has taught at Columbia Business School, the Bard Graduate Center, and New York University and has been a part-time faculty member at Parsons School of Design at The New School since 1984. He has appeared as an expert appraiser on PBS’s Antiques Roadshow since the first season, discussing ceramics, glass, silver, and decorative arts.

Leslie B. Grigsby, senior curator of ceramics and glass at Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library, is responsible for more than 20,000 ceramic and glass objects. She received her BA in art history from the University of Illinois and her postgraduate diploma in art gallery and museum studies from the University of Manchester in England. Grigsby has published extensively on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ceramics, design sources, and the histories of dining and drinking. She was instrumental in sending online Winterthur’s catalogue of more than 90,000 objects and has curated numerous major exhibitions. Grigsby has lectured across the US, Canada, and the UK, as well as in China and Australia. 

Adam T. Erby is associate curator at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, where he is responsible for both special exhibitions and historic interiors. He was a major contributor to the recent conservation of George Washington’s “New Room,” and he curated the special exhibition Gardens and Groves: George Washington’s Landscape at Mount Vernon. He is the principal author of the recently released book The General in the Garden: George Washington’s Landscape at Mount Vernon (2015). Erby holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture. He is currently at work on the upcoming restoration of Mount Vernon’s front parlor and researching George Washington’s purchases of British furniture.

Laurie Ossman joined the Preservation Society of Newport County in 2013 as director of museum affairs, overseeing curatorial, conservation, research, and educational initiatives at its eleven historic properties (seven of them National Historic Landmarks).

Ossman previously served as director of Woodlawn Plantation and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Pope-Leighey House in Alexandria, Virginia; deputy director of Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami; chief curator at the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum in Palm Beach; and curator and restoration project manager for Ca’ d’Zan, the Ringling mansion in Sarasota, Florida. In addition, she was guest curator of the Maryland Historical Society’s Looking for Liberty state history overview exhibition and has held research positions at the Smithsonian Institution, Monticello, and the Office of the Curator at the White House.

Ossman earned her PhD in architectural history from the University of Virginia, and her books include Carrere and Hastings: The Masterworks (2011), with Heather Ewing, Great Houses of the South (2010), and The Gentleman’s Farm (2016).