Author Bios

Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1977. Mr. Naifeh, who has written for art periodicals and worked at the National Gallery of Art, studied art history at Princeton and did his graduate work in Fine Arts at the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University. Mr. Smith, who majored in English literature at Colby College, studied medieval and Renaissance music as a Watson Fellow in Europe and did graduate work at Harvard while serving as the assistant conductor of the Harvard Glee Club. He also wrote two television series, one on human behavior with Phil Donahue and one on the Supreme Court and the U.S. Constitution with Archibald Cox. Naifeh and Smith founded the legal publishing company Best Lawyers® in 1981.

The two men have written many books on art and other subjects, including four New York Times bestsellers. Their biography Jackson Pollock: An American Saga won the Pulitzer Prize in 1991 and was a finalist for the National Book Award. It was made into the Academy Award-winning 2000 film Pollock starring Ed Harris and Marcia Gay Harden and inspired John Updike’s novel, Seek my Face. Naifeh and Smith have been profiled in The New Yorker, The New York Times, USA Today, and People, and have appeared on 60 Minutes. They live in Aiken, South Carolina, where they serve as chairmen of the Juilliard in Aiken Festival, which they helped found in 2009.