Object Details
- interviewee
- Catlin, Stanton L.
- interviewer
- O'Connor, Francis V.
- Place of publication, production, or execution
- New York (State)
- Physical Description
- 277 Pages, Transcript
- General Note
- Originally recorded on 9 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 18 digital wav files. Duration is 13 hr., 38 min. Transcripts have been heavily edited by the interviewee; researchers may wish to consult the sound recordings along with the transcript.
- Access Note / Rights
- Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
- Summary
- An interview of Stanton Catlin conducted 1989 July 1-September 14, by Francis V. O'Connor, for the Archives of American Art.
- Citation
- Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Stanton L. Catlin, 1989 July 1-September 14. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
- Funding
- The digital preservation of this interview received Federal support from the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center.
- Biography Note
- Stanton L. Catlin (1915-1997) was a curator, gallery director, educator, art historian, and expert on Latin American Art.
- Catlin studied art history at Oberlin College and graduated in 1937. After graduation, he studied painting and art history at the Academy of Arts in Prague, Czech Republic for two years. Catlin received a Fogg Museum Fellowship in Modern Art at Harvard University to survey collections of art in Europe. However, the project was canceled because of World War II.
- During the war, Catlin served as a Cultural Relations Representative for the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs where he assisted with exhibition arrangements throughout Latin America. In 1942, he also began teaching the history of art in the United States at the University of Chile. After the war, Catlin served in the Field Operations Division of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, working in the Displaced Persons Operation from 1945-1946.
- From 1947 to 1950, Catlin served as the executive director of the American Institute of Graphic Arts. He received his graduate degree in art history from New York University in 1952, and shortly thereafter became editor and curator of American art at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. From 1958 to 1967, Catlin was the assistant director of the Yale University Art Gallery. While there, he curated the landmark exhibition Art of Latin America Since Independence in 1966, the first exhibition to include only Latin American art and the accompanying catalog remains a standard reference source. That same year, Catlin won a Grammy Award for best album notes for an essay on Mexican mural painting.
- In 1967, Catlin left Yale to take a position as director of the Art Gallery at the Center for Inter-American Relations before joining the faculty of Syracuse University in 1971 and becoming director of the university's Art Gallery. He remained at Syracuse for the rest of his career.
- Catlin was a consultant on the major retrospective exhibition of the work of Diego Rivera at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1986. He also worked on a project to document Mexican murals in the United States. Catlin died in Fayetteville, New York in 1997.
- Language Note
- English .
- Provenance
- This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
- Location Note
- Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 750 9th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20001
- Record number
- (DSI-AAA_CollID)5454
- (DSI-AAA_SIRISBib)215546
- AAA_collcode_catlin89
- Type
- Sound recordings
- Interviews
- Theme
- Latino and Latin American
- Archives of American Art
- Topic
- Museums -- Study and teaching
- Educators -- Interviews
- Museum directors -- Interviews
- Latino and Latin American artists
- Theme
- Latino and Latin American
- Record ID
- AAADCD_oh_215546
