Officers
Allen W. Bernard, President is a historical researcher, writer, architectural preservationist, and interpreter of local history in Cincinnati, Ohio. Allen has written extensively on topics relating to architectural preservation and genealogy and is also the author of The Prints of Benjamin Miller, A Catalogue Raisonné. He served as President of the Graphic Arts Forum of Cincinnati, a volunteer in the Print Department of the Cincinnati Art Museum and serves as a Shareholder in that institution. He attended Fairfield University, Ball State University and holds a doctorate from the University of Cincinnati. He is an avid collector of prints, both historical and some contemporary, and has served on the AHPCS Board since 2014.
Clayton Lewis, First Vice President and Regional Activities Chair, is Curator of Graphic Materials at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan. He worked as adjunct faculty to the University of Michigan School of Art and in the field of commercial printing before becoming the first Curator of Graphic Materials at the Clements in 2002. Clayton holds a B.F.A. from Swain School of Design and an M.F.A. from Parsons School of Design.
James S. Brust, Second Vice President, is a psychiatrist in private practice in San Pedro, California. He is a Currier & Ives collector and researcher and has served AHPCS in many roles since joining the society in 1976, including as a board member, chair of two annual meetings, and as a contributor to Imprint and the AHPCS News Letter. Jim’s research interests extend to other areas as well, most prominently Western historical photographs, maps, and manuscripts. He is a co-author of Where Custer Fell: Photographs of the Little Bighorn Battlefield Then and Now (University of Oklahoma Press, 2005). He has an M.D. from the Boston University School of Medicine.
Nancy Finlay, Secretary and Immediate Past President, is an independent curator in Hartford, Connecticut. From 1998 to 2015, Nancy was Curator of Graphics at the Connecticut Historical Society. Prior to joining the staff of the Connecticut Historical Society, she was employed as a print specialist at the New York Public Library and as assistant curator of printing and graphic arts in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. She is editor of Picturing Victorian America: Prints by the Kellogg Brothers of Hartford, Connecticut, 1830-1880 (Wesleyan University Press, 2009). Nancy has a B.A. from Smith College and an M.F.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.
Robert Newman, Treasurer, is a third-generation owner of The Old Print Shop in New York City. He started working with his father Kenneth M. Newman in 1972 and joined the staff full time after graduating from college in 1979. He was the primary editor of the Old Print Shop’s publication Portfolio for over fifteen years. Robert served as AHPCS President from 2013 to 2016. He received a B.F.A in photography but spent most of his time learning printmaking and art history.
Committee Chairs and Editors
Sarah Weatherwax, Publications Committee Chair, is the Senior Curator of Graphic Arts at The Library Company of Philadelphia. She has written articles for Imprint, Daguerreian Annual, The Magazine Antiques, and Pennsylvania History, and contributed a chapter on Peter S. Duval to Philadelphia on Stone: Commercial Lithography in Philadelphia, 1828-1878 (Penn State University Press, 2012). Sarah received a B.A. in History from the College of Wooster and an M.A. in History from the College of William and Mary.
Caroline Sloat, Imprint Editor (incoming), has edited books and journals for Old Sturbridge Village and the American Antiquarian Society. Her articles have appeared in some of those publications and the Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar. She was picture editor for the five volumes of A History of the Book in America and for A Place in My Chronicle: A New Edition of the Diary of Christopher Columbus Baldwin 1829-1835 (2010). Over the years, she has observed the growth of interest in visual culture by historians and literary scholars who also recognize the work of prints in telling the American story. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and the University of Connecticut.
Jackie Penny, AHPCS News Letter Editor, is the Graphic Designer at the American Antiquarian Society. She earned a B.A. from Worcester State University, an M.A. in English from Clark University, and an M.L.I.S. from Simmons College.
At-Large Board Members
Class of 2024:
Thomas P. Bruhn is Director Emeritus of the William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, where he also taught in the Art History Department. He has been active in the AHPCS as a contributor to Imprint of both articles and book reviews and is presently Chair of the Committee for the Ewell L. Newman Book Award. In addition to AHPCS, he is also a member of the Print Council of America and the American Antiquarian Society. He received his PhD in Art History from the University of Pennsylvania in 1981. His publications on American prints center principally on late 19th-century artists.
Roger Genser is a private dealer in prints and drawings in Santa Monica, California. He specializes in historical and modern American prints, Mexican prints, color woodcuts, as well as five centuries of European prints. He is the author of Frances H. Gearhart: The Color Block Prints in Wichita 1922-1937 (Wichita Art Museum, 2019). Roger has been a longtime member of both the Santa Monica Arts Commission and the Santa Monica Landmarks Commission. He has been a member of the International Fine Print Dealers Association since 1989 and served on its board from 1999-2005. Roger earned a B.A. in ceramics and photography from California State University, Northridge.
An architect by profession, David G. Wright, FAIA, has spent close to thirty years researching the lives and work of the American painter-etchers of the last third of the nineteenth century, a group of men and women who captivated the American art scene–and thrilled the American public–with evocative and stunning prints. He has written articles discussing the etchings of Robert Swain Gifford, Emily Kelley Moran, Mary Nimmo Moran, Thomas Moran, Stephen Parrish, and Stephen Ferris, to name but a few. In 2010 he published a two-volume work on Peter Moran, Domestic and Wild: Peter Moran’s Images of America, which received the Ewell L. Newman Book Award from AHPCS in 2011. Wright served as a past board member of AHPSC between 2005 and 2010, and as Society treasurer from 2010 to 2015.
Class of 2025:
Diann Benti is the editor of Fanny Palmer: The Life and Work of a Currier & Ives Artist (Syracuse University Press, 2018). She served as the AHPCS Web Content Editor from 2019 to 2021. Diann previously worked as a librarian and archivist at the American Antiquarian Society, Harvard University, the Huntington Library, and the University of Southern California. She received a B.A. in History from Kenyon College and an M.L.I.S. from the University of Maryland.
Stephanie Delamaire is the Curator of European and American Art at the Carnegie Museum of Art. She was previously the Associate Curator of Fine Arts at the Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library. Stephanie is a specialist in 19th century American painting, print technology, and the art market. Her recent writing credits include “Was Fanny Palmer the Powerhouse Behind Currier & Ives” in Art in Print (July 2018) and the Lasting Impressions: The Artists of Currier & Ives exhibition catalog and website (2016). She teaches the Fine Art (Prints and Paintings) portion of the Connoisseurship courses for the Winterthur Program. Stephanie has a Ph.D. in Art History from Columbia University.
Gregg Walla has been collecting prints since 1970, and became a charter member of the AHPCS in 1976. Fifty years of collecting has concentrated mostly on Currier & Ives and views of Chicago. To finance his hobby, Gregg founded a company named Timberline Lock that produced furniture hardware to major office furniture manufacturers. Not one to sit still in retirement, Gregg now is actively involved in a charity called Rebuilding Together that provides free home repairs to low-income people. Gregg firmly believes in the mission of the AHPCS, and thinks that society can learn a great deal from the visual images left behind in our history.
Helena Wright is the Curator Emerita of Graphic Arts at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History. Her past projects include The First Smithsonian Collection: the European Engravings of George Perkins Marsh and the Role of Prints in the U.S. National Museum (Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2015), which won the 2016 AHPCS Ewell L. Newman Book Award; the website America on Stone: The Harry T. Peters Collection of 19th Century American Lithographs (2005); With Pen & Graver: Women Graphic Artists Before 1900 exhibition catalog (1995); and Imprint articles on Audubon’s portraits and print collecting in the Gilded Age. Helena has a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College and an M.S. from Simmons College.
Class of 2026:
Christopher W. Lane was the owner of The Philadelphia Print Shop West in Denver, Colorado. Besides buying and selling prints, Chris researches, lectures, and writes extensively on old prints and maps. He has written numerous articles that have appeared in journals and books, as well as a series of booklets on prints and map collection. Chris is the author of Prints of Philadelphia (1990 with D.H. Cresswell), Impressions of Niagara (1993), and Panorama of Pittsburgh (2008), and has curated several print exhibitions. Chris shares news and ideas about antique prints on his blog: Antique Prints Blog.
2022-2023 Leadership Team
2021-2022 Leadership Team
2020-2021 Leadership Team
2019-2020 Leadership Team