Rafael Chacón

H. Rafael Chacón is Bruce and Suzanne Crocker Director of the Montana Museum of Art and Culture and Professor of Art History and Criticism at The University of Montana-Missoula where he lectures on a broad range of art historical subjects. He received his doctorate in art history with honors from the University of Chicago, having been awarded numerous research fellowships to study in Europe, including an award from the Spanish Ministry of Culture for his dissertation on Michelangelism in Renaissance sculpture. He has written on a range of topics related to Renaissance and baroque art, both in Europe and in the Americas, most recently focusing on revival style architecture in the U.S. Northwest during the late 19th century. Rafael has been an expert for many Smithsonian Journeys programs in Cuba and Western, Central, and Eastern Europe. He has twice walked the Camino de Santiago, the ancient pilgrimage route across France and Spain.

Margaret Monnier

Margaret Monnier is an expert on the Iberian Peninsula and has been living in Spain for the past 25 years.  She has a Masters degree in History from the University of Granada focusing on the coexistence between Jews, Muslims, and Christians during the Medieval period on the Peninsula. For twenty years she has been sharing her knowledge of and passion for Spain and Portugal in the field of educational travel, lecturing for various University programs and at cultural conferences. Her areas of expertise also include the Basque Country, Portuguese history and the Pilgrimage to Santiago.

Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, Margaret also studied Modern Standard Arabic.  Her experience and knowledge Spanish and Portuguese History is as rich and varied as that of the contemporary daily life and cultural details on the Iberian Peninsula.

Janet Duncan Jones

Janet Duncan Jones is Professor of Classics at Bucknell University. She received her B.A. in Latin from the College of William and Mary and her M.A. and Ph.D. in classical archaeology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Janet is an active field archaeologist specializing in Greek and Roman art and architecture, ancient urbanization, ancient technology with a focus on ancient glass production, and environmental history. Her publications focus on ancient technology and the impact of those technologies on ancient landscapes. Her current research focuses on the impact of the Moors in southern Spain on urbanism, architecture, technology, and intellectual history. Janet is full of stories from her extensive travels in the Mediterranean and Middle East and from over 20 years of archaeological field work in Greece at Athens and Corinth, in Turkey at Gordion and Gritille Hoyuk, in Tunisia at Carthage, and in Jordan at el-Lejjun, Humayma, and Aqaba.

Aneta Georgievska-Shine

Aneta Georgievska-Shine is a scholar of the Renaissance and the baroque eras, yet as an art historian, her interests range from ancient to contemporary art.  In addition to her affiliation with the University of Maryland, she frequently presents lectures for museums and art institutions in the Washington D.C. area, including the Walters Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, and the Smithsonian. Her publications include scholarly books and numerous articles in U.S. and international journals, as well as essays in exhibition catalogs.

A popular Smithsonian Journeys Expert, Aneta has led numerous journeys to France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, as well as Central and Eastern Europe. In addition to her art historical expertise, she brings a deep knowledge of the history, politics, and languages of Central and Eastern Europe. Aneta is a native speaker of Macedonian and has working knowledge of several other European languages.