Craig Hugh Smyth, Renaissance Art Historian, 91

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Craig Hugh Smyth, 91, Dies; Renaissance Art Historian

By ROJA HEYDARPOUR

Craig Hugh Smyth, an art historian who drew attention to the importance
of conservation and the recovery of purloined art and cultural objects,
died on December 22 [2006] in Englewood, New Jersey. He was 91 and
lived in Cresskill, New Jersey.

The cause was a heart attack, his daughter, Alexandra, said.

Mr. Smyth led the first academic program in conservation in the United
States in 1960 as the director of the Institute of Fine Arts at New
York University.

Long before he began his academic career, he worked in the recovery of
stolen art. After the defeat of Germany in World War II, Mr. Smyth was
made director of the Munich Central Collecting Point, set up by the
Allies for works that they retrieved. There, he received art and
cultural relics confiscated by the Nazis, cared for them and tried to
return them to their owners or their countries of origin. He served as
a lieutenant in the United States Naval Reserve during the war, and the
art job was part of his military service. Upon returning from Germany
in 1946, he lectured at the Frick Collection and, in 1949, was awarded
a Fulbright research fellowship, which took him to Florence, Italy.

It was in Florence, a city full of art-loving tourists whose presence
could be hard on the works they loved, that his interest in
conservation was piqued, said Mariët Westermann, the director of the
Institute of Fine Arts. He concentrated on the late-Renaissance
drawings of Bronzino, best known as a Mannerist painter. While working
on his own research, he took photographs of many other drawings of the
16th century.

"He put Mannerist art back on the map," Ms. Westermann said.

Mr. Smyth received his Ph.D. in art history from Princeton in 1956, six
years after he became a professor at the Institute of Fine Arts. He
wrote many scholarly articles and books, including, "Mannerism and
Maniera" and "Repatriation of Art From the Collecting Point in
Munich After World War II."

Mr. Smyth was an honorary trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and
was the director of the Harvard University Center for Italian
Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti in Florence. He was also chairman
of the advisory committee of the J. Paul Getty Research Institute for
the History of Art and the Humanities.

Mr. Smyth is survived by his wife, Barbara Linforth Smyth of Cresskill
[New Jersey]; two children, Alexandra, of New York City [New York], and
Ned, of Sag Harbor, New York; and two grandchildren.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/01/arts/01smyth.html?ref=obituaries

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