David Sellin


David Frost Sellin was an American art historian, curator, educator, and author. He taught at a number of universities, worked on the staffs of several museums, and served as curator of the U.S. Capitol, 1976-1980.

Biography

He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Thorsten and Amy Anderson Sellin. He attended Quaker schools. As a teenager, he studied privately with painter Frank B. A. Linton, a former student of Thomas Eakins. He spent a year in Sweden in the atelier of painter Otte Sköld. He received a bachelor's degree, 1952 magna cum laude, and a master's degree in art history, 1956, from the University of Pennsylvania. He returned to Stockholm to study for a year at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts, and studied for two years in Rome as a Fulbright scholar.
He returned to Philadelphia, worked as an assistant curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1958-1960, and served as administrator of schools at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1960-1962. He completed a doctorate in art history at the University of Pennsylvania, 1968.
His research into the influence of France on 19th-century Philadelphia artists - notably Joseph A. Bailly, Mary Cassatt, Eakins, and Howard Roberts - culminated in a 1973 exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Sellin curated three additional exhibitions featuring Eakins as a subject—American Art in the Making: Preparatory Studies for Masterpieces of American Painting, 1800-1900 ; Thomas Eakins, Susan Macdowell Eakins, Elizabeth Macdowell Kenton ; and Thomas Eakins and His Fellow Artists at the Philadelphia Sketch Club. His research into expatriate American artists who settled in France led to a 1982 joint exhibition by PAFA and the Phoenix Art Museum, that also traveled to France.
He was a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, American University, Tulane University, the University of Texas, and other universities. While serving on the faculties of Colgate University, 1963-1968, and Wesleyan University, 1969-1972, he also directed their art galleries.
He moved to Washington, D.C. in 1971, to work as a research fellow at what became the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. As curator of the U.S. Capitol, 1976-1980, he oversaw restoration of four of the massive paintings in the Rotunda, and conserved hundreds of architectural drawings by Thomas U. Walter, architect of the Capitol's dome.
He published numerous articles on American artists, and worked as an independent curator and consultant.

Exhibitions

He married Anne C. Robertson, 27 November 1965. He died of lymphatic cancer in Washington, D.C., 11 April 2006.