Alexander Nemerov is an art historian and the author of many books, including Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography and named by Vogue one of the best books of the year. Nemerov is the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford University, where The Stanford Daily named him one of the university’s top ten professors.

Nemerov describes his Una's Lecture as "a tale told of one drawing — a tale told by someone who has loved pictures for many years without knowing exactly why — a tale about love as a way of being in the world, a force that informs a person’s study: a slow enlightening, all at once, of what it is to give and receive love selflessly."