Catlin, Stanton L. (Stanton Loomis)

d. 1997.

From the description of Artist file : miscellaneous uncataloged material. (Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)). WorldCat record id: 86149488

Stanton Loomis Catlin, art historian and expert in Latin American art, was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1915. After completing his undergraduate degree in History of Art at Oberlin College in 1937, he traveled to Czechoslovakia to continue his studies at the Academy of Arts in Prague. Known as Tod to friends and family, Catlin became the first Fogg Museum Fellow in Modern Art at Harvard University. He set out to survey modern art collections in Europe, when the outbreak of World War II caused him to change his focus to modern art in Mexico.

Catlin later contributed to the Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1940 and supervised a ten-city Latin American tour of contemporary American paintings sponsored by the Inter-American Affairs Committee on Art in 1941. It was on this tour that he met many of the artists whose work he would study for decades to come, including Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Jose Clemente Orozco. During World War II, Catlin was appointed to the Facultad de Bellas Artes, Universidad de Chile, serving as a Cultural Relations Representative for the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. At the conclusion of the war, however, Catlin interrupted his art career to serve as a Deputy Chief of Field Operations in the Munich and Heidelberg headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, where he assisted in the Displaced Persons Operation from 1945-1946.

Stanton Catlin went on to hold a series of positions at renowned art institutions across the United States, including Curator of American Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (1956-1958), Assistant Director at the Yale University Art Gallery (1958-1967), and the first Director of the Art Gallery at the Center for Inter-American Relations (now the Americas Society) (1967-1971), before joining Syracuse University in 1974 as a faculty member and Director of Art Galleries, where he would remain for the rest of his career. Catlin’s teaching and research interests included Latin American art history as well as museology, and he served as director of the university’s museum studies program for several years. Catlin also took on a variety of lecturing and consulting duties, notably acting as curatorial adviser for the creation of the Musée du Panthéon National Haitien and the inaugural exhibition Maîtres de l’Art Haitien .

At various times, Catlin was deemed the “pre-eminent living scholar in the field of Latin American art” and “dean of Latin American art history in the United States.” One of his major contributions to the field was the organization of the landmark exhibit Art of Latin America Since Independence in 1964. Sponsored by Yale University and the University of Texas at Austin, the exhibition was the first to include only Latin American art in its full historical context since the turn of the century, and the catalog has remained a standard reference for scholars. Also in 1964, Catlin won a Grammy Award for best album notes for his essay on mural painting in Mexico: Its Cultural Life in Music and Art . Other major contributions include his work as a consultant on the exhibition Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, sponsored by the Detroit Institute of Art in 1986. He completed a census of Rivera’s murals and contributed to a documentary on the artist’s work. In the 1990s, he embarked on an extended project to document Mexican mural painting, working with the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. He finished his report on Mexican murals in the United States just before his death at his home in Fayetteville, NY in 1997.

From the guide to the Stanton Loomis Catlin Papers 2007-01. 651708613., 1921-1997, (Benson Latin American Collection, The University of Texas at Austin)

Stanton L. Catlin (1915-1997) was a museum director, art historian, and educator from Fayetteville, N.Y.

He was the editor, then curator of American Art, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1952-1958; assistant director, Yale University Art Gallery, 1958-1967; director of galleries, chairman of museology program and professor of museum studies and art history, Syracuse University, 1974-1982.

From the description of Oral history interview with Stanton L. Catlin, 1989 July 1-Sept. 14 [sound recording]. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 613316368

Museum director, art historian, b. 1915; d. 1997

Editor, then curator of American Art, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1952-1958; assistant director, Yale University Art Gallery, 1958-l967; director of galleries, chairman of museology program and professor of museum studies and art history, Syracuse University, variously between 1974-1982.

From the description of Stanton L. Catlin papers, [undated] and 1930-1991. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 81952824

Museum director, art historian, educator; Fayetteville, New York.

Editor, then curator of American Art, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1952-1958; assistant director, Yale University Art Gallery, 1958-l967; director of galleries, chairman of museology program and professor of museum studies and art history, Syracuse University, 1974-1982.

From the description of Oral history interview with Stanton L. Catlin, 1989 July 1-1989 Sept. 14 [sound recording]. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 245521123

Museum director, art historian, educator; Fayetteville, New York.

Editor, then curator of American Art, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1952-1958; assistant director, Yale University Art Gallery, 1958-l967; director of galleries, chairman of museology program and professor of museum studies and art history, Syracuse University, 1974-1982.

From the description of Oral history interview with Stanton L. Catlin, 1989 July 1-1989 Sept. 14. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 220207806