Leadership


Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios is a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the leading national non-profit in preservation support and advocacy. HAHS is situated in the Historic Sites Department and Preservation Division of the National Trust, both headquartered in Washington, DC.  Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios has a central office at member-site, Chesterwood (Stockbridge, MA), a site of the National Trust.

HAHS is assisted by two leadership steering groups. The Advisory and Executive Committees are both made up of colleagues who are collaborators in our vision and work. The Advisory Committee is composed of aligned professionals in related fields who are willing to volunteer their time and expertise to support the goals of HAHS. The committee assists HAHS in forming alliances and pursuing opportunities that benefit the membership as a whole. The HAHS Executive Committee is comprised of staff representation from our member sites, who are partners in advancing the growth and impact of the network.

Valerie A. Balint, Director, Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios 

Valerie Balint is the Director of HAHS, and the author of the Guide to Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios (Princeton Architectural Press, June 2020).  Prior to HAHS, Ms. Balint served for seventeen years on the curatorial staff at Frederic Church’s Olana (also a HAHS site), most recently as Interim Director of Collections and Research. Her previous work also includes curatorial positions at Chesterwood and the Frelinghuysen Morris House & Studio (also a HAHS site). She served as the New York State Coordinator of “Save Outdoor Sculpture,” a program of the Smithsonian American Art Museum to document all public sculpture in the United States.

Wanda Corn, Chair 

Wanda M. Corn, now retired from her teaching position at Stanford University, has been an advocate for HAHS since its inception. Having once failed in her efforts to save an important artist’s home in Washington DC, she taught herself the history of artists’ spaces in this country and today educates others about lessons learned from preserved homes, studios, view-sheds, and material possessions.

Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw

Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw is the Class of 1940 Bicentennial Term Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been a fellow at the National Portrait Gallery and also served as the gallery’s Senior Historian and Director of Research, Publications, and Scholarly Programs. She is the author of numerous publications on American art and art history, with an emphasis on issues of difference, from the 18th century to the current moment. At Penn, she has been honored with the School of Arts and Sciences Award for Innovation in Teaching and the Ira H. Abrams Memorial Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Laura Esparza

Laura Esparza is the former Division Manager of the Museums and Cultural Programs Division for the Austin Parks and Recreation Department. In that capacity, she manages 11 museums and cultural centers with 18 programs in theater, dance, visual arts, film and arts education, managing a staff of 173 full and part-time employees and a $7 million budget. She oversees the management of museums such as the Elisabet Ney Museum, a HAHS member, and is currently assisting with the development of the residence of sculptor Charles Umlauf as the contract manager for the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum. She has worked as a professional arts administrator, facility planner, and organizational consultant for the last 30 years.

Charles “Chas” Miller III

Chas Miller is president and owner of ForwardMiller, a consulting firm based in Rhode Island that provides management and consulting services on cultural travel, museums, philanthropy, and relationship building. Before launching his firm, Miller worked at the National Trust for Historic Preservation (1985-1989, Headquarters and the Boston Office), Columbia University, and the American Academy in Rome. Concurrent with ForwardMiller, he served for 14 years (until June 2018) as the Executive Director of Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation, a time when it generated transformational funding, growth, and support to the world’s oldest historic house museum. He also serves as Executive Director of his family’s foundation, whose focus includes the arts, education, healthcare, heritage, and preservation.

Lisa Stone

Lisa Stone is the former curator of the Roger Brown Study Collection (RBSC) of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a HAHS site.  Lisa Stone’s research and teaching concern the preservation and interpretation of artists’ environments, collections, and homes/studios. Her goal for the RBSC is to allow the histories of the 19th century building and a 20th century artist perform fully in the 21st century, and to enact historic preservation as a creative activity.

Karen Zukowski   

Karen Zukowski has been on the HAHS Advisory Council since its inception. Her PhD is on late 19th-century American artists’ studios, and she was a former curator of Olana, a HAHS site, and is now on its board. As an independent writer she publishes on artists’ studios and domestic environments. As a consultant she wrote the Furnishings Investigation for 101 Spring Street, Donald Judd’s home and a HAHS site; and she serves on the collections committee for Manitoga, another HAHS site.

Jeffrey Andersen, Chair

Jeffrey Andersen is Director Emeritus of the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut, and original member of HAHS.  He retired from the museum in 2018, after 41 years as director. During his tenure at the Florence Griswold Museum, working closely with teams of trustees and professional colleagues, Andersen led a transformative, decades-long campaign to reacquire the original Florence Griswold property with the goal of creating a new kind of American museum based on the site’s history as the creative center of the Lyme Art Colo.

Allison Cross

Allison Cross is the Executive Director of Manitoga/The Russel Wright Design Center in Garrison, New York.

Helen Harrison

Helen A. Harrison, the former Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in East Hampton, NY, has been involved with HAHS since its inception. She was on the planning committee that convened in 2000 to design and implement the National Trust’s HAHS program.

Donna Hassler  

Donna Hassler is the Executive Director Emerita of Chesterwood, a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and previious Administrator of the Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios Program.  A museum professional for over 30 years, Ms. Hassler is also an art historian specializing in 19th- and 20th-century American art.  She was the co-author of the two-volume catalogue on the American sculpture collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Victoria Munro  

Victoria Munro is the Executive Director of Alice Austen House in Staten Island, New York.

Valerie A. Balint, Director, Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios

Omar Eaton-Martinez, Senior Vice President for Historic Sites, National Trust for Historic Preservation

Rolf Diamant

Rolf Diamant is a writer and historian and Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Vermont. During his prior career with the National Park Service, Rolf pioneered new approaches for enhancing the relevancy and expanding constituencies for sites he managed for the NPS including the Frederick Law Olmsted Office and Archives, the Longfellow National Historic Site and Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park.  Rolf has been involved in HAHS since its establishment.

Nora Mitchell 

Nora Mitchell is Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Vermont and an advisor to the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre.   Prior to retiring from a long career with the National Parks Service, Nora was the founding director of the Conservation Study Institute, and the Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation, technical centers advising historic sites on landscape history and management – interests that lead her to HAHS.

600 14th Street NW, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20005

Martha Nelson, Chair, Board of Trustees
Carol Quillen
, President and CEO
Omar Eaton-Martinez
, Senior Vice President Historic Sites

For more than 70 years, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has led the movement to save America’s historic places. A privately funded nonprofit organization, the Trust works to save America’s historic sites; tell the full American story; build stronger communities; and invest in preservation’s future.

Thanks to the passion and dedication of our advocates and supporters, they are able to protect hundreds of places every year.