Diana Buitron-Oliver, Archaeologist, Curator, 56

[DGH]

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Diana Buitron-Oliver, 56, an archaeologist with expertise in Greek and
Roman art who was guest curator of exhibits at museums from Washington
to New York, died April 29, 2002, at Sibley Memorial Hospital in the
metropolitan Washington DC area, of pneumonia and liver failure -- she
also had breast cancer.

Dr. Buitron-Oliver curated two exhibits for the National Gallery of Art
that toured nationwide: "The Human Figure in Early Greek Art" (1987 to
1988) and "The Greek Miracle: Classical Sculpture From the Dawn of
Democracy, the Fifth Century, B.C." (1992 and 1993).

The latter exhibit included fragments of beauty from a long-ago age --
parts of buildings, dismembered torsos -- that showed how Greek art
broke with tradition by depicting the human figure more naturally.

In his review of the exhibit, Washington Post staff writer Hank Burchard
called Dr. Buitron-Oliver "a scholar in serene command of her field."

In 1993, she curated a National Archives exhibit called "The Birth of
Democracy," which featured ancient Greek artifacts.

She was curator of Greek and Roman art from 1977 to 1984 at what is now
the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Since 1988, she had been an adjunct
professor at Georgetown University, where she taught the history of
Greek art.

She was born in Ecuador to an Ecuadoran father and American mother and
grew up in Peru, Venezuela, Mexico and France.

She was a 1969 art history graduate of Smith College, where she was
inspired by renowned classics professor George Dimock. She received a
master's degree in fine arts and a doctorate in Greek and Roman art and
archaeology from New York University.

She participated in excavations at Carthage in Tunisia and Morgantina in
Sicily.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, she conducted an archaeological
project at the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates near the ruins of the ancient
city of Kourion on Cyprus. She excavated the archaic precinct, among the
earliest sections of the sanctuary.

She settled in the Washington area about 1980 and lived in Chevy Chase.

She could speak English, Spanish, French, Italian and modern Greek. Her
doctoral thesis, "Douris: A Master-Painter of Athenian Red-Figure
Vases," was published in book form by Philipp von Zabern in 1995.