Janetta Rebold Benton

Janetta Rebold Benton is Distinguished Professor of Art History at Pace University, New York. She has lectured for many years at the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and has served as the lecturer on trips worldwide for both institutions. A former resident of Paris, she recently returned from St. Petersburg, Russia, where she was Visiting Professor in the Graduate School of Art History at European University as a Fulbright Senior Scholar. Dr. Benton is the author of eight art history books (with translations into French, Chinese, and Farsi), as well as numerous scholarly articles published in France, Italy, Austria, Germany, and elsewhere. She holds degrees/diplomas from Harvard University, Brown University, George Washington University, and Cornell University.

Pamela Kachurin

Pamela Kachurin is an art historian specializing in Russian and Soviet art and architecture. Having first traveled to the Soviet Union before 1991, Dr. Kachurin has been able to witness the remarkable changes since then. She has traveled and worked in Uzbekistan, Belarus, and the major cities of Russia. Dr. Kachurin has conducted wide-ranging research on Russian and Soviet artists at Russia’s museums, archival repositories, and libraries. She is the author of “Making Modernism Soviet”, published by Northwestern University Press in 2013, as well as numerous articles, book reviews and encyclopedia essays on Russian and Soviet art. She was the curator of "Designing the Modern Utopia" an exhibition of Soviet-era textiles at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. Kachurin currently works with the Russian collection at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, and has lectured widely in the US and abroad.

Nadieszda Kizenko

Nadieszda Kizenko teaches Russian and East European History at the State University of New York at Albany.  She received degrees in Russian History and Literature at Harvard University, Columbia University, and the Harriman Institute. Prof. Kizenko explores the intersection of nations and empires, of history and culture, and the extent to which religion has been a constituent element of national and imperial identity.  She has long been fascinated by how the three Baltic nations succeeded in keeping their distinctive identities even when ruled by Germans, Poles, and Russians. For Russia in particular, the three nations have meant a very specific form of access to Europe—and opposition to it.

Prof. Kizenko’s research, supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Sciences Research Council, and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, has allowed her to publish widely on questions of religion as an instrument of empire.  Her first book, A Prodigal Saint:  Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People, won the Heldt Prize; a recent article, “The Feminization of Patriarchy?”, won the Best Article award from Association for the Study of Eastern Christianity.  Prof. Kizenko is currently writing a history of confession in the Russian empire.

Charles Ingrao

Charlie Ingrao, a popular Smithsonian Journeys Expert, is a professor emeritus of history at Purdue University, where he has taught a broad range of courses on the European World. He has published twelve books and given over a hundred 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).