Phillip Collier was born in Wetumpka, Alabama and grew up in nearby Montgomery. He earned a B.F.A. in visual design from Auburn University. After working in Birmingham for a short time, he moved to New Orleans to work as a freelance illustrator, art and creative director, before establishing his own firm, Phillip Collier Designs, in 1990. Local clients include Arthur Roger Gallery, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Louisiana ArtWorks and Mignon Faget. National clients have included the Palmer House Hotel (Chicago), the Waldorf Astoria (New York), CBS Sports Radio, Sprint and TABASCO®. Collier has won many local, regional and national design awards and was selected to create the official poster of the 1980 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, which was chosen for the cover of the Library of Congress Quarterly magazine and was included in the Library of Congress’ 100-year Retrospective on the History of Posters, at home in the Washington, D.C. permanent collection. He is currently designing a book on the history of TABASCO®, with design associate Scott Carroll, slated for publication in 2006.

J. Richard Gruber, Ph.D. was appointed Director of The Ogden Museum of Southern Art in 1999. Prior to joining the Ogden Museum, he served as Deputy Director for the Morris Museum of Art and as the founding Director of its Center for the Study of Southern Painting in Augusta, Georgia. He has also been Director of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, Tennessee, Director of the Wichita Art Museum in Wichita, Kansas, and Director of the Peter Joseph Gallery in New York. After graduating from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, he earned an M.A. degree in art history from the University of Colorado at Boulder, then a M.Ph. and Ph.D. in art history from the University of Kansas at Lawrence. He was awarded a Kress Foundation Fellowship and a Smithsonian Pre-Doctoral Research Fellowship at the National Museum of Art. Active as a curator and author, he has published books and catalogs, including Thomas Hart Benton and the American South; American Icons; From Madison to Manhattan: The Art of Benny Andrews.

Jim Rapier A native and resident of New Orleans, Jim Rapier earned a B.A. in English from Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. He served as a reporter for the Daily Advance in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. Jim and his wife, Marion, live in New Orleans, where he has been a reporter for the Times-Picayune since 1995.

Mary Beth Romig is the Public Information Officer for The Ogden Museum of Southern Art. She earned a B.A. in English and Secondary Education from the University of New Orleans. She served as Managing Editor of New Orleans Magazine, Louisiana Life, and Our Kids Magazine, where she was a contributing writer. She has also worked for Special Olympics International, Tulane University, and as the Public Relations Director for St. Mary’s Dominican High School. Romig is a native New Orleanian, and lives in the city with her husband, Cecil Haskins, and daughter, Lindsey.