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.

Neal Hurst is the curator of textiles and historic dress at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He received his BA in history from the College of William and Mary and his MA from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware. He served as assistant curator on the inaugural exhibition for the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In August of 2016, Neal joined the curatorial team at Colonial Williamsburg, and he has recently opened a new exhibition entitled Elegance, Taste, and Style: The Mary D. Doering Fashion Collection (2024).

Laura F. Edwards is the Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty in the history department at Princeton University. She is a prize-winning author who focuses on the legal history of the nineteenth-century United States, with an emphasis on people’s interactions with the law. Her most recent book, Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States (2022), combines legal history with material culture to reconstruct the parts of the legal system that afforded property ownership to those without property rights.

Janie Verret Luster is a cultural preservationist of the United Houma Nation hailing from the tiny community of Bayou DuLarge in Terrebonne Parish. She is a dedicated practitioner of diverse tribal customs, including crafts such as palmetto basketry, alligator garfish scale jewelry, and Spanish moss dolls; environmental conservation; and Indigenous foodways. She is also fluent in Louisiana Houma-French, the creole language spoken by her tribe for nearly three centuries. Luster comes from a long line of traditional healers and artists. When the Houma faced discrimination and forced assimilation, her parents steadfastly maintained their tribal culture. They passed their customs to Luster, and she, in turn, has shared them with her children and grandchildren.

Douglas Fazzio is a tribal member of the United Houma Nation. Born in 1966 in Houma, Louisiana, Fazzio was a commercial fisherman and boat captain, and in 1995 he was severely injured in an offshore accident and had to undergo multiple back surgeries. While he was recuperating, he learned to carve from his cousin Roy Parfait, a well-known woodcarver in the United Houma Nation. Fazzio began by carving dolphins and fish, then started building model replicas of large shrimp boats. He currently creates many carvings, builds various types of boats, weaves baskets, and makes dream catchers and jewelry with garfish scales. Fazzio is a dedicated husband, father, and grandfather, and he has volunteered after hurricanes to help his community. He enjoys spending time with his family and friends, and he never passes up an opportunity to go fishing.

Brenda Dardar Robichaux, born in 1958, in New Orleans, Louisiana, is a prominent figure in the United Houma Nation, having served as the principal chief. She spent her childhood in the south end of Golden Meadow, and has lived most of her adult life in Lafourche Parish and Raceland. Robichaux’s connection to Louisiana’s wetlands is deeply rooted in her family’s history and traditions. Her grandfather was a trapper, hunter, and farmer who used plants from the local environment for traditional medicine. Her father was a fisherman and oysterman, further strengthening her ties to the land and the wetlands. As the former principal chief of the United Houma Nation, Robichaux has been a vocal advocate for the preservation of the wetlands and the cultural identity of her community. She has expressed concern about the impacts of environmental changes and coastal land loss on her community.

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. 

Nina Bozak, curator of rare books at the Historic New Orleans Collection, previously worked in the special collections of both Tulane and Dillard Universities. She received her MLIS from the Palmer School of Library and Information Science at Long Island University with a concentration in rare books and special collections, after which she worked at Swann Auction Galleries and Bauman Rare Books in New York before joining the staff of HNOC in 2010. In addition to her work with HNOC’s rare books, Bozak is also a curator for its performing and literary arts collections.

Angelika R. Kuettner was promoted to associate curator of ceramics and glass at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in 2019. Prior to graduate school at William and Mary, she worked as the curatorial assistant at the Reeves Center at Washington and Lee University. Kuettner has published and lectured on a variety of topics including the ceramic-manufacturing partnership of Benjamin Leigh and John Allman in eighteenth-century Boston, mended ceramics in early America, silver lusterware in Federal America, and free Black potter David Jarbour. She served as co-editor of the 2017 issue of Ceramics in America and was a contributing author to the 2021 publication The Material World of Eyre Hall: Four Centuries of Chesapeake History. Most recently, she co-authored the article “English Delft for Colonial Tavern Tables in King William County and Williamsburg, Virginia,” which appeared in the 2023 issue of Ceramics in America. She currently serves on the board of the American Ceramic Circle.

Amy Azzarito is an author and material culture historian. She uses physical objects to trace the past. Her latest book, Elements of a Home (2020), reveals the fascinating stories behind more than sixty everyday household objects. She is a PhD candidate at the University of York, United Kingdom, where her dissertation examines the economics of jewelry for 18th century British women. She lives just outside San Francisco with her husband and five-year-old daughter.

Sarah Duggan is the project manager of the Decorative Arts of the Gulf South (DAGS) project at the Historic New Orleans Collection, an initiative that documents and shares information about pre-1865 material life in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. She leads DAGS’s work through data management, cataloging fieldwork, archival research, and two internship programs. In 2021 she co-curated the exhibition Pieces of History: Ten Years of Decorative Arts Field Work. Duggan holds a master’s degree from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of a Delaware, and a bachelor’s in history and religious studies from the College of William and Mary.

Tara Shaw’s design principles stem from more than thirty years of success as an antiques importer and designer. Shaw is a respected supplier of European antiques for a host of AD100 and Elle Decor  A-listers; has a custom furniture line, Maison; and licensed product lines with Restoration Hardware and Century Furniture. She is the author of Soul of the Home (2020) and is working on her second book for Abrams. Shaw has a global design business, and her work has been featured in Veranda, Elle Decor, Wall Street Journal, World of Interiors, and numerous other shelter magazines.

Dr. Ashley Rogers is the executive director of the Whitney Plantation, a museum and memorial in Wallace, Louisiana, dedicated to educating the public about the history and legacies of slavery. She opened the museum in 2014 and has been instrumental in developing the interpretation of the site. She is an advocate for inclusive and social justice–focused museum practice, and she currently serves on the American Alliance of Museums’ working group on voluntary repatriation, restitution, and reparations. She holds a PhD in history from Louisiana State University, where her dissertation focused on Jim Crow plantations and Cancer Alley in Louisiana.

Theoangelo Perkins is cofounder and board president of the Wallace Center for Arts and Reconciliation. He was the first Black mayor of Harpersville, Alabama and is now in his fourth term, and also serves his community as a minister, a former teacher, and a realtor. An alumnus of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, Perkins majored in English and history. After working in the field of education for several years, he went into both pastoring and politics. Perkins also serves on numerous boards and commissions in central Alabama and is the proud father of two daughters.

Nell Gottlieb is cofounder and executive director of the Wallace Center for Arts and Reconciliation. Gottlieb is also a practicing artist, addressing settler colonialism from her family legacy of enslavement.

Johanna Metzgar Brown is the chief curator and director of collections, archaeology, and research at Old Salem Museums and Gardens and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She has a BA in American studies and anthropology from Salem College and an MA in history museum studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program in Cooperstown, New York. She has written for a variety of publications including Ceramics in America, the Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts, The Magazine Antiques, and Antiques and Fine Art and lectures regularly on Moravian and southern material culture.

Daniel Hammer is dedicated to preserving the history and culture of New Orleans through his work as president and CEO of the Historic New Orleans Collection, where he has worked for nineteen years, serving in various capacities including head of reader services and deputy director. Daniel earned a bachelor’s degree in German literature from Reed College and a master’s degree in historic preservation from Tulane University School of Architecture. He currently serves as chair of the French Quarter Museum Association and as a member of the board of the Vieux Carré Commission Foundation and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation Advisory Council.

A graduate of Tulane University’s School of Architecture, Tracie Ashe has been practicing architecture in New Orleans for more than twenty years. Her firm–practis–is 100 percent woman-owned and has built a reputation for thoughtful, creative, and deliberate work that celebrates historic architectural fabric with a view to modern use, sustainability, materials, and systems. Their work aligns place with purpose, allowing old and new to seamlessly compliment and contrast each other. Since 2018, she has served on the Architectural Review Committee of the city’s Historic District Landmarks Commission and was recently featured in Biz New Orleans magazine’s Top Real Estate Influencers issue.