Kenneth Hafertepe

Kenneth Hafertepe is a professor of museum studies at Baylor University and an award-winning author on American and Texas material culture. A native of Dallas, he attended Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He did his doctoral work at the University of Texas at Austin, studying with William H. Goetzmann, the Pulitzer Prize winning historian of the American West, and Drury Blakeley Alexander, the dean of Texas architectural historians.

Ken's subjects have included the Smithsonian Castle, the French Legation and the Governor's Mansion in Austin, Ashton Villa in Galveston, the Spanish Governor's Palace in San Antonio, and the buildings of Fredericksburg, San Antonio, and Waco.

He also writes on Texas art. He contributed an essay for the catalogue The Art of Texas: 250 Years, which accompanied the exhibit at the Witte Museum. More recently he wrote essays on the painter Louise Wueste and the sculptor Elisabet Ney appeared in Making the Unknown Known: Women in Early Texas Art, 1860s-1960s, edited by Victoria Cummins and Light Cummins.

Ken's book on The Material Culture of German Texans won the Ron Tyler Award from the Texas State Historical Association, as well as awards from the Victorian Society in America, the Philosophical Society of Texas, and the Conservation Society of San Antonio. Historic Homes of Waco, Texas also won the Ron Tyler Award from TSHA.

In addition to writing, he has spoken at many museums and historic sites, including, the Alamo, the Amon Carter Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Witte Museum in San Antonio.