Founder and Chairman of the Art Renewal Center®, Ross is the leading authority on William Bouguereau and co-author of the published Catalogue Raisonné William Bouguereau: His Life and Works. Ross received his MA in art education from Columbia University. His speeches and essays are read by over 300,000 art professionals, educators, students and fans each year; and have become required reading in countless classrooms. He has given lectures and speeches at prominent venues including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sotheby’s NY, The Dahesh Museum, NY, the Berkshire Museum, MA, The Wadsworth Athenaeum, CT, the MEAM Museum, Barcelona, as well as university campuses among other venues. Ross is also a well-known collector of 19th Century European painting and of Contemporary Realism, being published in numerous magazine and newspaper articles including Forbes Magazine and Fine Art Connoisseur among others. Ross has also been a frequent Juror in numerous competitions and is an ARC Salon and ARC Scholarship judge.

Kara Lysandra Ross is the Co-Chair and Chief Operating Officer for the world-renowned Art Renewal Center® (ARC). She holds a BA in Art History from Drew University. As an art educator she has been a contributing writer for Collections Magazine, and Fine Art Connoisseur, and has been published frequently in other magazines and newspapers. She was the co-editor of the William Bouguereau Catalogue Raisonné and author of chapter 28 in the published second edition. In her role at the ARC she spearheaded the introduction of the live exhibition associated to the ARC Salon Competition which has traveled to prestigious venues such as Sotheby’s NY, Sotheby’s LA, The European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM) and the Salmagundi Club, serving as chief organizer and curator. She is an ARC Salon Juror, and has served as juror in other competitions for organizations such as the 2nd Velázquez Painting & Sculpture competition, China, the South African Portrait Society, International Guild of Realism, IX Arts, and the Ani Academy. She is also an expert on 19th century Academic French and English painting, co-authoring William Bouguereau: The Essential Works and is currently researching and writing the catalogue raisonné on Edmund Blair Leighton, for which she is accepted as the world authority, authenticating works by this artist for Sotheby's, Christie's, and Bonham's among others.

Swanson has his PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, England and was the Director of the Springville Museum of Art, Utah, where he has served for over 30 years. He is a lecturer/scholar/writer and expert on 19^th Century European Art and Russian Art through the 20^th Century. Swanson is the leading authority on Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and John William Godward and author of the Catalogue Raisonnés for both artists. In total, the number of books Swanson has published is well into the teens.

Michael John Angel is an ARC Living Master™ and regarded as one of the foremost figurative painters alive today; with his paintings hanging in both public and private collections on both sides of the Atlantic. From 1982 to 1988 he was the Director of the National Portrait Academy in Toronto, Canada, and from 1992-1995 the Assistant Director of the Florence Academy of Art in Florence, Italy. In 1997, his school, the Angel Academy was founded with the assistance of Lynne Barton. Angel Academy is now one of the most successful Atelier Schools in the world, requiring of its students the highest standards of traditional techniques.

View ARC Gallery

Juliette Aristides is an ARC Living Master™ and founding member of the Water Street Atelier with Jacob Collins, Aristides is a recipient of the Elisabeth Greenshields Grant; and founded the Classical Atelier at Gage Academy of Fine Art in Seattle, Washington. She has authored three books, Classical Drawing Atelier, Classical Painting Atelier, and Lessons in Classical Drawing, which includes an instructional DVD and quickly became a best seller. Her books have become well received guidelines for drawing and painting.

View ARC Gallery

Daniel Graves is an ARC Living Master™. He was a student of Richard Serrin at the Villa Schifanoia Graduate School of Fine Art, and studied under Nerina Simi, daughter of the Florentine painter, Filadelfo Simi, a student of Gérôme. Daniel Graves went on to found The Florence Academy of Art in 1991, where he still serves as the Academic Director. In April 2008 Daniel Graves and The Florence Academy of Art received the Excellence in Art Education Award from the Portrait Society of America. The academy’s programs in Florence, Sweden and the U.S. are accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design.

View ARC Gallery

B. Eric Rhoads is the Founder and Chairman of Streamline Publishing, Inc., publisher of Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine, which provides art collectors and enthusiasts with in-depth editorial coverage of historical and contemporary representational art authored by well-known experts. Rhoads also publishes PleinAir, a magazine focused on representational landscape painting with in-depth coverage of historical and contemporary artworks painted en' plein air and in studio and the Plein Air Convention. The company also produces artist videos with many masters including ARC Living Master™ Max Ginsburg. Rhoads, an entrepreneur, founded the company in 1986 and produces other magazines and conferences. He is a well known author and blogger on art marketing, has released a DVD series for artists on art marketing, and is also a landscape and figurative painter.

Jeannie Wilshire is the Co-Director of the Association of Fantastic Art, dedicated to the promotion, recognition and elevation of the art of imaginative realism. The AFA is the organization behind the groundbreaking IX symposium, the annual celebration of imaginative realism (founded in 2008) and the IX Exchange, the online nexus for collectors of original paintings, drawings and sculpture from this style of realist art. In addition, she is the author and designer of Visions of Never: The Collection of Fantastic Art (2009) and the forthcoming History of Imaginative Realism. She is also the designer of IlluXConcepts Volumes 1-5 and The Art of the Dragon: The Definitive Collection of Contemporary Dragon Paintings (2012). She was honored to be a guest curator of AT THE EDGE: Art of the Fantastic, the most comprehensive exhibition of imaginative realist art ever to be mounted in the US. AT THE EDGE premiered at the Allentown Art Museum in June of 2012, drawing record crowds to the museum. She is currently curating the upcoming infra:REAL - The Art of Imaginative Realism show for the Jonathan Levine Gallery in NYC, which premiers in August of 2015. Together with her husband, Patrick, she has been collecting original imaginative realist art for 15 years.

Anthony Waichulis is an ARC Living Master™ and is regarded as the premiere trompe l'oeil painter living today. Celebrated by critics and collectors alike, Waichulis' works have been published in nearly every major art publication worldwide including but not limited to: The Artist's Magazine, Fine Art Connoisseur, American Artist, American Art Review, American Art Collector, Art News and Art-Talk. Anthony has exhibited in a salvo of key venues across the country including the Smithsonian Institute, National Arts Club, Orlando Museum of Art, Butler Institute, Washington Museum of Fine Arts, The World Arts Museum in Beijing as well as many others. He is also the founder of the highly successful Waichulis Studio and co-founder and chief curriculum designer of the International Ani Art Academies project. In 2011 The Waichulis Studio merged with the Ani Art Academies project to form the domestic flagship of the Ani project, The Ani Art Academy Waichulis in Wilkes Barre, PA. Since then the Ani Art Academies project has seen the launch of international Academies in Anguilla, The Dominican Republic, Thailand and Sri Lanka.

View ARC Gallery

Yuqi Wang was born in China, 1958. His work has been collected by many public institutions, including: the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. , the Art Museum of Harvard University, China National Gallery, as well as by private collectors all over the world. His work has been recognized with awards both nationally and internationally, winning the Grand Prize at The International Portrait Competition of the Portrait Society of America and Second Prize at The Portrait Competition of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., among others. Wang classically trained at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts and Central Academy of Fine Arts, China. He has huge artistic talent as a self-taught, child prodigy, in the time of the cultural revolution, becoming a brilliant success in China. Remaining continuously curios in the Renaissance masters, and later, for a long time, with the work of the Pre-Raphaelites, year after year, he developed rationality through history's path, to arrive at himself; a contemporary artist, who stands upon our time, facing the condition of people’s lives, sharpening his subjects with signature mastery and sensitivity to the human spirit.

View ARC Gallery

Mandy Hallenius is a certified K-12 art teacher and past Co-President Elect of the Washington Art Education Association. She is the president and cofounder of the Da Vinci Initiative as well as a graduate of the four year program at the Aristides Atelier. She also studied classical drawing at the Corry Studio of Figurative Art and Mims Studios. She has 7+ years of classroom experience, and teaches professional development workshops for art teachers all over the United States.

Dan Thompson, an ARC Living Master™, has won numerous awards including Grand Prize for Best of Show in the American Society of Portrait Artist’s International Portrait Competition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Erlebacher Award from the New York Academy of Art, two Ethel Lorraine Bernstein Memorial Awards for Excellence in Painting from the Corcoran School of Art, and two Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grants.

He co-founded two schools of Art in New York City: The Grand Central Academy of Art and the Janus Collaborative School of Art. Thompson has served on the MFA faculty of the New York Academy of Art for 15 years, the Art Students League of New York and is a senior faculty member of Studio Incamminati, School for Contemporary Realist Art in Philadelphia.

View ARC Gallery

A recognized authority on California Impressionism, Art Historian Jean Stern has extensive experience in the field as an author, curator, lecturer, and teacher. He is the executive director of the Irvine Museum Collection at the University of California, Irvine. In over twenty-five years at the museum, he has established a national presence for the Irvine Museum in the fields of California Art and History through a noteworthy international series of books, exhibitions, lectures, articles and video documentaries. In his career, he has presented over 250 lectures and judged and juried nearly 100 art competitions. Mr. Stern has written essays for over 25 books and museum exhibition catalogues, such as all three PLEIN AIR PAINTERS OF CALIFORNIA series. He has presented tours and lectures on California Art in numerous museums including the International Cultural Center, Krakow, Poland; Mona Bismarck Foundation in Paris, France; National Academy Museum in New York as well as many others. He was a consultant to and appears in IMPRESSIONS OF CALIFORNIA, a PBS documentary video series on art in California, and on PLEIN AIR: PAINTING THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE, (PBS 2007). Since 1992, the Irvine Museum, with Jean Stern as director, has produced a number of traveling exhibitions, including SELECTIONS FROM THE IRVINE MUSEUM (1993 and 2010); ROMANCE OF THE BELLS, The California Missions in Art (1995); GUY ROSE, and more. In 2017, Mr. Stern received the prestigious CHEVALIER OF THE ORDER OF ARTS AND LETTERS by the French Ministry of Culture. He has also been presented with three LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS: by the Laguna Plein Air Painters Association in 2013; by the Plein Air Painters of America in 2014; and by PLEIN AIR MAGAZINE, at the Third Annual Plein Air Convention in Monterey, CA, in 2014.

Born in Massachusetts in 1965, Tom Hughes went to university for physics and worked as a staff artist at The Christian Science Monitor daily newspaper until 1989, when he realized his calling was that of fine art.

Once referred to as "a genius" by renowned artist and author Charles Movalli, Hughes is an accomplished painter in oil and water media. He has had solo exhibitions in galleries in the New England states, North Carolina, Lake Tahoe, San Francisco, and France. He paints both alla prima and extensively in the studio: subjects include portraiture, figurative, landscape, and the occasional still life or genre picture. In 2017, Hughes was invited to become a member of the Plein Air Painters of America. His work has been featured in American Artist Watercolor magazine and Fine Art Connoisseur, for which he painted the magazine's publisher B. Eric Rhoads' portrait in oils, as well as in the book Watercolor Painting by Tom Hoffmann (Watson-Guptill). Collections containing his work include; the Liberty Mutual Corporate Headquarters in Boston, The Boston Private Bank, and The Hyatt Hotel in Incline Village, NV as well as numerous private collections. Tom Hughes and his wife Charlene live in the San Francisco Bay area.

Tim Newton is in his fourth term as Chairman of the Board/CEO of the famed Salmagundi Club, NYC. As an art collector for almost 30 years, he has amassed a notable collection of works. Tim is the founder and curator of American Masters, an annual art exhibition and sale at the Salmagundi Club as a benefit event for the institution, fundraising for Salmagundi's main gallery renovation that was completed in 2014. Since its inception in 2008, the show has exhibited some of the very best in American contemporary art. The show is still an annual event at the Club. He is a sought-after speaker on the subject of art and collecting as well as the history of the Salmagundi Club. Frequently a judge of art competitions he has judged, among others, the Oil Painters of America Virtuosos (Master and Signature Members Show), the Mystic International Maritime Exhibition at Mystic Seaport as well as Plein Air Easton (Easton, Maryland) in 2012 and 2016. In addition to Salmagundi, he also serves on the Board of Trustees for the Stobart Foundation and the Board of Advisors for the Clark Hulings Foundation.