John Shapley (BA University of Missouri 1912, MA Princeton University 1913, PhD University of Vienna 1914) was appointed to a position as Professor and Chair of the Department of Art at the University of Chicago in 1929. Diverging from his predecessor Walter Sargent’s focus on the integration of practice with historical and theoretical approaches to art, Shapley sought to make the University a stronghold for historical scholarship.

Edward Francis Rothschild joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Department of Art as an instructor in 1925 upon receiving his MA from Columbia University and became an Assistant Professor of the History of Art in 1929. A member of the University Board of Museums in 1928, Rothschild was named acting Chair of the Department of Art in 1931. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 1934.

Following an initial career at the Art Institute of Chicago (Lecturer; Assistant to the Director, 1909-13), Lucy Driscoll served as Instructor (1913-1924) and Assistant Professor (1925-1952) in the History of Art at the University of Chicago’s downtown extension, the University College. To students of Chinese art, she is best known as co-author with Kenji Toda (1880-1976 ) of Chinese Calligraphy—the first scholarly account in English to articulate the principles, styles, and techniques of China’s most esteemed art form.

Sargent joined the University’s School of Education as professor of drawing and education in 1909. The second president of the College Art Association, from 1914–1915, he was an influential proponent of a nationwide movement that sought to reform artistic education in the United States. A theorist, pedagogue, and landscape painter, he promoted instruction in art and aesthetic appreciation as an integral part of children’s intellectual development. For Sargent, art was the counterpart to rational scientific thinking and of comparable importance.