Speakers






Speaker's Biographies

Bill Drucker owns and operates Drucker Antiques, expanding on the legacy started by its founders, Janet and Byrd Drucker.

Drucker Antiques is recognized worldwide as the authority on Georg Jensen hollowware, flatware and jewelry. Bill also focuses on 20th century design including modern Scandinavian design, European and American Arts and Crafts Movement jewelry and 20th century studio jewelry. He appraises single pieces and/or collections for estate, insurance, and donation purposes.

He is also an author and frequent lecturer on Georg Jensen and Arts & Crafts period jewelry. Bill is a member of the Appraisers Association of America and is USPAP certified.

  
Darcy L. Evon is the author of Hand Wrought: Arts and Crafts Metalwork and Jewelry 1890-1940 (Schiffer 2014).  A freelance author, researcher and Chicago historian, she frequently speaks on the Chicago Arts and Crafts Movement and serves as the historian for the Kalo Foundation in Park Ridge, IL She was the former business technology columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and editor and publisher of I-Street Magazine, focused on emerging technologies and entrepreneurship.
 
Currently, Darcy is the CEO of The Village Chicago, which is the city’s leading social network of friendship, engagement and services for people over 50. She has had leadership roles at public and private universities, libraries, not-for-profit organizations, medical, technology, and media companies. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan (BA,MA), Darcy is a former anthropologist who was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and a National Museums of Kenya fellowship.


Marie Betteley is a gemologist, international dealer, and leading authority of Russian jewels and works of art, Marie founded Rare Jewels and Treasures in 1991 and consults for auction houses, museums and private collectors worldwide. Marie's book Beyond Faberge: Imperial Russian Jewelry, was published in 2020.


Elyse Zorn Karlin, is the curator of Chicago Collects: Jewelry in Perspective, the co-director of ASJRA and the publisher of Adornment, The Magazine of Jewelry & Related Arts. She is the author of Jewelry and Metalwork in the Arts & Crafts Tradition, An Artist in the Studio: The Jewelry of Sally Ann Wekstein, and the catalog International Art Jewelry, 1895- 1925. She is also the co-author of Imperishable Beauty: Art Nouveau Jewelry and editor of Maker & Muse: Women and 20th Century Art Jewelry.

Her curating credits include: Jewelers of the Hudson Valley and International Art Jewelry, 1895-1925 and Finer Things: Jewelry and Accessories from the 1880s-1930s. She also curated Out of this World! Jewelry in the Space Age and Maker & Muse: Women and 20th Century Art Jewelry. She is currently curating Chicago Collects: Jewelry in Perspective which opens May 24, 2024 at the Driehaus Museum and then moves to the Muskegan Museum of Art, MI.


Beatriz Chadour-Sampson is an internationally known jewelry historian, author, and lecturer based in England. Her publications range from the classical world to the present day and include her doctoral thesis on the Italian goldsmith Antonio Gentili da Faenza (1980) and catalogues for the jewelry collection of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Cologne (1985) and for the historical rings in the Alice and Louis Koch Collection, Switzerland (1994). She was consultant curator for the redesign of the William and Judith Bollinger Jewellery Gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2004-2008) and guest curator of its Pearls exhibition (2013-14).

The descendants of Alice and Louis Koch have entrusted her as curator of their collection for the past thirty-five years and today she continues to advise the Swiss National Museum, Zurich, where the collection is kept today. She was the curator of the Gübelin Gem Museum in Lucerne, which opened in 2023.


Janis Staggs is Director of Curatorial and Manager of Publications at Neue Galerie New York. She is curator of the forthcoming exhibition, Klimt Landscapes, opening in February 2024, and has previously organized or co-organized various shows, including Wiener Werkstätte Fashion and Accessories, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele: 1918 Centenary, Wiener Werkstätte, 1903-1932: The Luxury of Beauty, Gustav Klimt and Adele Bloch-Bauer: The Woman in Gold, and Wiener Werkstätte Jewelry, among others for the Neue Galerie.

Janis has contributed essays to various Neue Galerie as well as outside publications. A specialist in the decorative arts, her work focuses on the intersection between the fine and decorative arts with an emphasis on the Vienna 1900 era. She has recently joined the Advisory Board of the Association for the Study of Jewelry & Related Arts.


Beth Carver Wees is Curator Emerita, The American Wing, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where for 20 years she oversaw the collections of American silver, jewelry, and other metalwork. Prior to joining The Met’s staff in 2000 she was Curator of Decorative Arts at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA.

Beth lectures internationally and has written widely on the subjects of silver and jewelry. She holds degrees in art history from Smith College and the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art. An alumna of the Attingham Summer School and Royal Collection Studies, she serves as President of the Board of the American Friends of Attingham.

She also sits on the Advisory Board of the Association for the Study of Jewelry and Related Arts, and on the Advisory Board of The Silver Society in England. Beth was one of six organizing curators for The Met’s 2018-19 exhibition, Jewelry: The Body Transformed, as well as a contributor to its catalogue. Her exhibition Jewelry for America was on view at The Met from June 2019 to May 2021. She is currently writing a book with Sheila Smithie about the New York jewelry firm, Marcus & Co.

 

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