Frank O. Spinney, Helped Establish Sturbridge Village, 93

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Frank Oakman Spinney, who led in the early development of Old Sturbridge
Village and had a passion for documenting the life and work of
19th-century American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, died in Medford,
New Jersey, his hometown, on June 4, 2002, at the age of 93.

Mr. Spinney was also a pioneer in training museum curators. He designed
and taught the first graduate program for curators and directors of
historical museums, as a professor of museum studies at SUNY College at
Oneonta, New York.

He was the recipient of two Guggenheim Memorial Fellowships, was a
member of the American Antiquarian Society, and was a trustee of the
Saint-Gaudens Memorial of New York City, New York.

In 1960, Mr. Spinney was named president of Old Sturbridge Village in
Sturbridge, Massachusetts, where he was curator from 1950 to 1953,
director from 1954 to 1960, and president from 1960 to 1962.

Old Sturbridge Village was established in 1946 to re-create life in
small-town New England in the 1830s. The village, located on 200 acres
near the Connecticut border, now has 40 buildings and hosts about
400,000 visitors a year.

Mr. Spinney made his last visit to the village for its 50th anniversary
celebration in 1996, according to Jack Larkin, director of research,
collections, and library at Old Sturbridge Village.

"Frank was a well-known leader in his field, and a pioneer in the
development of outdoor American history museums," Larkin said.

Mr. Spinney's passion for the work of Saint-Gaudens - sculptor of a
memorial on the Boston Common that commemorates the valor of the 54th
Massachusetts Infantry, the first African-American Union regiment - was
instrumental in the US government's acquisition in 1964 of the
Saint-Gaudens Historical Site at Cornish, New Hampshire.

"Frank was very important in the transfer of the Saint-Gaudens property
to the National Park Service," said John Dryfhout, superintendent of the
Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site.

Mr. Spinney was very active in the documentation of the historical
person of Saint-Gaudens, Dryfhout said, explaining that he secured
important manuscripts, letters, and memorabilia concerning the sculptor.

Mr. Spinney led the effort to transfer the Saint-Gaudens research
collection from the Cornish site, where the sculptor lived and worked,
to the Rauner Library at Dartmouth College, so that it could be
cataloged and made more accessible to art historians and other
researchers, Dryfhout said.

The Saint-Gaudens collection consists of 26 boxes of Saint-Gaudens'
correspondence and business records.

Dryfhout said Mr. Spinney was witty, bright, and very ethical. As the
author of short stories dealing with common ethical issues faced by art
curators, Mr. Spinney would use his stories to lead ethics discussions
with his students, Dryfhout said.

Mr. Spinney was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, and spent his
childhood in Upper Montclair, New Jersey. He graduated from Phillips
Academy, Andover, in 1926, and received his bachelor's and master's
degrees from Yale University. He served with the Army Field Artillery in
World War II.

From 1930 to 1947 he taught high school Latin in New Haven, Connecticut.