Author: Gretchen Buggeln

Gretchen Buggeln holds the Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Chair in Christianity and the Arts at Valparaiso University. She previously was associate professor and director of the residential research program at the Winterthur Museum. Buggeln is the author of Temples of Grace: The Material Transformation of Connecticut”s Churches, 1970-1840 (2003) and The Suburban Church: Modernism and Community in Postwar America (2015), as well as numerous articles on religious architecture and artifacts, museums, and American religious history. She is co-editor, with Crispin Paine and S. Brent Plate, of Religion in Museums: Global and Multidisciplinary Perspectives (2017). Barbara Franco has had a long career in American history museums as a curator and administrator and most recently served as Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and as Founding Director of the Gettysburg Seminary Ridge Museum. She served as a past chairman of the American Association for State and Local History and co-edited Ideas and Images: Developing Interpretive History Exhibits (1992). She has written numerous articles on museum practice and historical interpretation, and currently works as an independent scholar and museum consultant.