Louisa Dresser (October 25, 1907 – September 15, 1989), also known as Louisa Dresser Campbell, was an expert on early American painting, and curator at the Worcester Art Museum. She was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 1956 for her studies.

Early life and education

Louisa Dresser was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, the daughter of Frank Farnum Dresser and Josephine Lincoln Dresser. Through her mother's family, she was descended from Levi Lincoln Sr. and

Levi Lincoln Jr. Levi Lincoln Jr. (October 25, 1782 – May 29, 1868) was an American lawyer and politician from Worcester, Massachusetts. He was the 13th Governor of Massachusetts (1825–1834) and represented the state in the U.S. Congress (1834–1841). Linc ...

, governors of Massachusetts. She graduated from Vassar College in 1929. She pursued further studies at the Fogg Art Museum, and the Courtauld Institute in London.

Career

In 1932, Louisa Dresser joined the staff at the Worcester Art Museum, as associate curator of decorative arts. During World War II she was appointed acting director of the museum. In 1949 she became curator of collections, and she continued in that role until her retirement in 1972. During her tenure as curator, Dresser wrote ''Seventeenth-Century Painting in New England'' (1935), remembered as "a study marked by careful scholarship that spawned research and exhibitions by other scholars."Georgia B. Barnhill
"Louisa Dresser Campbell"
''Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society'' (1990): 333–335. She was one of the 1956 Guggenheim Fellowship recipients. In 1964 she became the third woman elected to membership in the American Antiquarian Society. After retirement, Campbell continued editing the museum's catalogs, and served as an honorary trustee. She was one of the founders of the Worcester Center for Crafts, wrote a history of the town's historic

Salisbury Mansion Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of Wi ...

, and was otherwise active in the community.

Personal life

Dresser's younger sister, Frances M. Dresser Herron, was also involved with art preservation, as a secretary to the second

Roberts Commission The Roberts Commission is one of two presidentially-appointed commissions. One related to the circumstances of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and another related to the protection of cultural resources during and after World War II. Both were ...

after World War II. Louisa Dresser married Donald W. Campbell in 1971; she was widowed in 1978. She died in 1989, age 81. One of the galleries at the Worcester Art Museum is named in her memory. An oral history interview with Louisa Dresser, conducted in 1972, is at the Archives of American Art.Robert Brown
"Oral History Interview with Louisa Dresser, 1972 October 19"
Archives of American Art.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dresser, Louisa 1907 births 1989 deaths American art historians American women art historians