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Art critic and historian, Virgil Barker was born in Abingdon, Virginia in 1889. He attended the Bordentown Military Institute, Harvard University and the Corcoran School of Art. Barker began his professional career in 1919, serving as special assistant for the biennial exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C. At the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, he held the position of Curator of Paintings, and in 1920, he became director of the Kansas City Art Institute. Following this period of museum work, Barker began writing art history and criticism. He joined the Editorial Board of the Arts, serving as associate editor and later as contributing editor. Working as an art critic in New York during the 1920s, Barker "came to know well many of the many important American painters who gravitated toward Alfred Stieglitz and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and whose works dominated American painting between the two wars."

During 1925-26, Barker acted as foreign editor, travelling through Europe to cover exhibitions. The Arts, which ceased publication in the late 1930s, remains a significant record of the art and art criticism of this period. In 1931, Barker joined the University of Miami as a professor of art. Praised as a great scholar and superb lecturer, he became a popular teacher. Barker remained at the University for twenty-eight years and promoted the visual arts in greater Miami and the University. Barker wrote several reviews for the Miami Herald as well an article on the art of Vizcaya. In addition to teaching, he served as a trustee at the University of Miami and played an instrumental role in the establishment of the Lowe Art Gallery, serving as its first director in 1950. In 1951 the University recognized Barker's scholarship awarding him the honorary Doctor of Letters degree. Barker's reputation as a scholar and teacher also led to his appointment by the Carnegie Foundation to an American Studies committee in 1956. Barker's responsibilities included selecting slides and writing text on colonial American painting for art history courses.

Barker also contributed to the knowledge and interpretation of American art through his writings. Barker served on the editorial boards of The Arts and The Art Bulletin, Art and Archaeology, The Magazine of Art, and Art in America. He contributed articles and reviews to Art in America, The Magazine of Art, The Yale Review, Saturday Review, and other magazines. Barker's first book Pieter Bruegel, the Elder, published in 1926, was the first work on Bruegel written in English. In 1931 Barker published a monograph on Henry Lee McFee as well as A Critical Introduction to American Painting.

Barker travelled throughout the United States for ten years, surveying paintings in museums and private homes for his next book, American Painting: History and Interpretation, published in 1950. The work, which presents American painting within its historical context and includes original interpretations, received favorable reviews. Author, critic, and museum director Lloyd Goodrich described the work as "...the best history of American painting so far written...it will be the definitive work in its field for a long time to come."

Barker's final work, From Realism to Reality in Recent American Painting (1959) contains a series of Barker's lectures. He also wrote numerous biographies of American painters for the Dictionary of American Biography, and Arts of the United States, as well as articles on Colonial American painting and John Singleton Copley for the Encyclopedia of World Art. Barker was a member of the College Art Association, and Association Internationale D'Art. The University of Miami Lowe Art Museum organized the Virgil Barker Memorial Collection of American Paintings following Barker's death in 1965, and numerous friends and colleagues donated to the collection.

Joseph Auslander was born on October 11, 1897 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A graduate of Harvard College, He was a poet, anthologist, translator of poems, editor, and novelist. Auslander was appointed as the first Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, from 1937 to 1941. Auslander was noted for his war poems, and his best-known work is "The Unconquerables" (1943), a collection of poems addressed to the German-occupied countries of Europe.

Audrey Wurdemann was born January 1, 1911 in Seattle, Washington. Wurdemann was the youngest winner of the Pulitzer Price for Poetry at the age of 24, for her collection Bright Ambush. She married Joseph Auslander in 1932. Wurdemann and Auslander collaborated on the novels My Uncle Jan and The Islanders.

They spent their last years living in Coral Gables, Florida. Wurdemann died on May 20, 1960 and Auslander died on June 22, 1965.

There were three sons born to Isidoro Fernández Cavada (d. 1838) of Santander, Spain and Emily Howard Gatier (d. 1903) of Philadelphia: Emilio (1830-1914), Federico (1831-1871), and Adolfo (1832-1871), all born in Cienfuegos, Cuba. After her husband’s death in 1838, Emily took her young sons to Philadelphia, where she later married Samuel Dutton (1814?-1889). Although they were raised in the United States, the Fernández Cavada brothers felt strong ties to the island of their birth, and each played different roles in its struggles for independence.

Federico Fernández Cavada (1831-1871) is perhaps the best known of the brothers, having published a book about his experiences as a prisoner of war in a Confederate prison during the US Civil War. He served as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Union Army until his capture in the battle of Gettysburg in 1863. Federico remained a prisoner at Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia until January 1864 and later published Libby Life, his sketches and illustrations of his prison experience.

Soon thereafter, Fernández Cavada was appointed United States consul at Trinidad, Cuba, a post he occupied until February 1869 when he resigned to take part in the Cuban insurrection that became Cuba’s Ten Years War (1868-1878). Federico was a General for the District of Trinidad, Commander in Chief of the Cinco Villas, and came to be the Commander-in-Chief of all Cuban forces. Burning and destroying Spanish property as a battle tactic, he became known as “General Candela” (General Fire). In 1871, Federico was captured by the Spanish gunboat Neptuno and was taken to Puerto Principe for trial. Although the exact date is not certain, Federico Fernández Cavada was executed in July 1871. He was survived by his wife, Carmela Merino, and their son Samuel.

The youngest Fernández Cavada, Adolfo (1832-1871), followed in his brother Federico’s footsteps. Having served in the Union Army in the 23rd Pennsylvania Infantry and as an aide to General A. A. Humphreys, Adolfo joined the Cuban struggle for independence and served as Commander of the District of Cienfuegos, later succeeding his brother as Commander-in-Chief of the Cinco Villas. On 18 December 1871, he was killed in battle at the coffee estate “La Adelaida” near Santiago de Cuba.

While his brothers took up arms to support the Cuban cause, Emilio (1830-1914) rallied support for the independence efforts from Philadelphia. He was an active fundraiser and information relay from his brothers to exiled strategists. With other exiles in Philadelphia and New York, Emilio Fernández Cavada raised funds and funneled arms and munitions to the insurgent forces on the island. Emilio later resettled with his family in Cienfuegos and fathered six children: Isidoro, Inés, Angela, Emilio (1866-1947), Adolfo, and Fernando, whose son Fernando Fernández-Cavada donated this collection to the Cuban Heritage Collection.

Emilio’s son Emilio Fernández-Cavada Suárez del Villar trained as a doctor in Philadelphia and in 1896 joined Cuba’s War of Independence (1895-1898) as a Lieutenant Colonel. His death was misreported in Liberating Army records when in fact he had escaped the island. Emilio later returned to Cuba and married Hortensia Elizondo, with whom he lived in Cienfuegos until his death in 1947.

John Bitter served as the Dean of the School of Music at the University of Miami from 1950-1963. He also conducted the UM Symphony Orchestra. Bitter was a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, PA. He was a student of Artur Rodzinski and Emil Mlynarski for conducting, a student of William Kincaid and Georges Barrere for flute, and a student of Rosario Scalero for composition. He conducted the Jacksonville Symphony from 1934-1937, and the Florida Federal Symphony from 1937-1939. He was also a guest conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Radio Italiana, the Hamburg Philharmonic, and other European symphonies from 1945-1950.