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.

Francisco García-Serrano

Francisco García-Serrano earned his M.A and Ph.D. in Medieval Iberian History at the University of California, Berkeley and is currently a professor of History in the Department of Humanities at Saint Louis University, Madrid Campus.  In addition, he has been a visiting professor at U.C. Berkeley, New York University in Madrid, and Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan.

His research focuses on the influence of the Mendicant Orders in Spain during the late Middle Ages and on religious identity and interfaith relations. Francisco García-Serrano has published Preachers of the City. The Expansion of the Dominican Order in Castile, 1217-1348 (University Press of the South, 1997), and his most recent contributions to collective books include “Del convento al palacio: los frailes y las oligarquías castellanas (siglos XIII-XIV)”, in Isabel Beceiro Pita, dir., Poder, piedad y devoción. Castilla y su entorno (siglos XII-XV) (Silex, Madrid, 2014), and “The Mendicants as a Mediterranean Phenomenon,” in Taryn Chubb and Emily Kelly, ed., Mendicants and Merchants in the Medieval Mediterranean (Brill, 2013). His current book project, The Friars and Their Impact in Medieval Iberia, contains the collaboration of fifteen international specialists.

Professor García-Serrano also serves as the Director of Ibero-American Studies at Saint Louis University, Madrid Campus, an academic program that he created. In addition he is the current president of the interdisciplinary association AHLiST (2012-2015) and has organized a number of international conferences.

Charles Ingrao

Charlie Ingrao, a popular Smithsonian Journeys Expert, is professor emeritus of history at Purdue University, where he has taught a wide range of courses on the European World. He has published thirteen books and given public lectures to academic, governmental, and military audiences across North America and central Europe. Charles has also been a regular commentator for print, radio, and television media, including The News Hour with Jim Lehrer (PBS).  In addition, Charles' family history has inspired a lifelong fascination with the western Mediterranean and the Spanish and Portuguese empires.