Ed Ruscha was born in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska and grew up in Oklahoma City. In 1956 he moved to Los Angeles, where he attended the Chouinard Art Institute. His work has been the subject of exhibits at the Centre George Pompidou, Paris, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Lawrence Weiner was born in 1942 in the Bronx, New York. Upon graduating from high school, he worked in a variety of jobs--on an oil tanker, on docks, and unloading railroad cars--and then traveled throughout North America before returning to New York, where he exhibited at the Seth Siegelaub Gallery in 1964 and 1965. Since the 1970s, wall installations consisting solely of words in a nondescript lettering have been a primary medium for Weiner. Solo exhibitions of his work have been mounted at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., ICA London, Dia Center for the Arts in New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others. Weiner lives in New York and Amsterdam.

Dave Hickey has written for most major American cultural publications. Formerly executive editor at Art in America, Hickey's publications include Prior Convictions (1989), The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty (1993), and Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy (1997). Hickey received the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism in 1994. He is currently associate professor of art criticism and theory at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.