James S. Ackerman is Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus at Harvard University and a Fellow and former Trustee of the American Academy in Rome. Professor Ackerman has lived for several years in Italy, beginning with service during the last war, and is the author of many studies on Italian architecture, including The Cortile del Belvedere (1954), and The Architecture of Michelangelo (1961). He has published The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Houses (1990) and Distance Points. He is co-author of a volume on historical practice and theory, Art and Archaeology (1963) and has also conceived and narrated the films Looking for Renaissance Rome (1975, with Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt) and Palladio the Architet and His Influence in America (1980).
Phyllis Massar is an architectural photographer who lives in New York City.
