William Wroth is a researcher, editor, author, and curator who specializes in the Hispanic and Native American traditional arts and cultures of the Southwest and Mexico.

Dr. Wroth is senior editor for a new series of editions by World Wisdom of the works of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. The first in this series is a new edition of one of Coomaraswamy's most far-ranging books, Figures of Speech or Figures of Thought?. Wroth's careful attention to details has resulted in a new edition that is more accessible than ever to readers, with some new notes from the author himself, all of the passages in foreign languages now translated, a new editor's preface, and a new introduction by Roger Lipsey.

Dr. Wroth is a graduate of Yale University and holds the M.A. and Ph. D. from the University of Oregon. He was Curator of the Taylor Museum of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center from 1976 to 1983. Since that time he has served as guest curator and consultant for exhibitions at the Taylor Museum, Museum of International Folk Art, American Craft Museum, St. Louis Art Museum, and other institutions. Dr. Wroth has been visiting professor in the Art and Anthropology Departments at Colorado College and was Director of the Southwest Studies Summer Institute at the College in 1991.

He is the author and editor of numerous works on Hispanic and Indian arts, including Ute Indian Arts and Culture from Prehistory to the New Millennium (Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and University of New Mexico Press, 2000); The Mexican Sarape: A History (St. Louis Art Museum, 1999); Images of Penance, Images of Mercy: Southwestern Santos in the Late Nineteenth Century (University of Oklahoma Press, 1991); Christian Images in Hispanic New Mexico (Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, 1982); and Hispanic Crafts of the Southwest (Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, 1977).

The works of Ananda Coomaraswamy on art, symbolism and metaphysics have inspired Wroth’s scholarly writing for the past thirty years. Recently he has published an essay on Coomaraswamy’s influence upon the traditional crafts revival of New Mexico (“Some Sources for the Ideas of Frank Applegate” in Daria Labinsky and Stan Hieronymus, Frank Applegate of Santa Fe: Artist and Preservationist, Albuquerque, 2001).