Eric Peterson is a painter, art consultant and appraiser. His involvement with the Arts Center includes serving as Board President in the 1970s, when the board included Mary Wyatt Allen, Don Baldwin and Hazel Hough. In the 1980s, Eric served as installations chair, planning and implementing numerous exhibitions at the gallery on 7th Street S. His curatorial expertise came again into play in the 1990s with the very first exhibition in the new Hough Gallery with a show called Spanning the Millennium, featuring artists who had displayed their work at the Arts Center in the past. His generous donations of art led to the naming of the Eric Lang Peterson Atrium Gallery on the second floor of the Morean building, where the public is invited to view these works of art. Eric has served the cultural community in St. Petersburg for 55 years in myriad tangible ways.