DAVID W. SCOTT (1916–2009)

The Los Angeles Times reports that David W. Scott, an artist and art historian who served as founding director of the National Museum of American Art, has passed away. Scott joined the Smithsonian Institution’s staff in 1963 as assistant director of what was then known as the National Collection of Fine Arts after teaching art history at Scripps College in Claremont. At the time, the National Collection was such a staid, conservative institution that he was warned he would lose his job if he didn’t take down abstract works from the walls of his own home—works he had painted. Sophy Burnham, author of The Art Crowd (1973), wrote that Scott discovered that the National Collection included only two pictures painted after World War II, and he became “determined to build the NCFA into a museum of consequence.”

Scott continued his quest after being named director in 1964 and guiding the collection’s transformation into what became the National Museum of American Art and later the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 1969, he was named planning officer for the National Gallery, where he served as liaison with architect I. M. Pei, designer of the museum’s east building. He was also involved with the gallery’s acquisition and installation of the Alexander Calder mobile Untitled, 1976, and the Joan Miro tapestry Woman, 1977. After his retirement from the National Gallery in 1984, he worked as a consultant for art and gallery projects throughout the United States and Canada and on preliminary planning for the remodeling of the Louvre in Paris.