Annette Blaugrund, an art historian, former curator and museum director, has written a number of award-winning books about American art and artists. She has worked as director of the National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts (1997, 2007); as the Andrew W. Mellon senior curator of paintings, drawings and sculpture at the New York Historical Society (1989, 1995); and as a curator at the Brooklyn Museum (1980, 1985) and has held positions at several other institutions. Dr. Blaugrund has written six books about American art and contributed seven chapters and twenty-nine articles to other books and journals. For her accomplishments she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy in 2008 and was named a chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government in 1992, among other honors. She currently sits on several philanthropic boards, juries art competitions and writes essays for magazines and catalogues. She holds a PhD in art history from Columbia University (1987), where for six years (1996, 2001) she taught American art and culture and currently sits on the advisory council of the Department of Art History and Archaeology. She has lectured on subjects from her books at museums around the world and has appeared on television and radio programs. A member of Women Writing Women's Lives, a group of sixty published biographers, she has spent the last three years researching and writing the biography of Harriet Hubbard Ayer.