David Frost Sellin (13 April 1930, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – 11 April 2006, Washington, D.C.) was an American art historian, curator, educator, and author. He taught at a number of universities, worked on the staffs of several museums, and served as curator of the U.S. Capitol, 1976-1980.^[1]

He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Thorsten and Amy Anderson Sellin. He attended Quaker schools. As a teenager, he studied privately with painter Frank B. A. Linton, a former student of Thomas Eakins. He spent a year in Sweden in the atelier of painter Otte Sköld. He received a bachelor's degree, 1952 magna cum laude, and a master's degree in art history, 1956, from the University of Pennsylvania.^[2] He returned to Stockholm to study for a year at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts, and studied for two years in Rome as a Fulbright scholar.^[3]

He returned to Philadelphia, worked as an assistant curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1958-1960, and served as administrator of schools at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), 1960-1962.^[4] He completed a doctorate in art history at the University of Pennsylvania, 1968.^[5]

His research into the influence of France on 19th-century Philadelphia artists – notably Joseph A. Bailly, Mary Cassatt, Eakins, and Howard Roberts – culminated in a 1973 exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.^[6] Sellin curated three additional exhibitions featuring Eakins as a subject—American Art in the Making: Preparatory Studies for Masterpieces of American Painting, 1800-1900 (Smithsonian Institution, 1976); Thomas Eakins, Susan Macdowell Eakins, Elizabeth Macdowell Kenton (PAFA, 1977); and Thomas Eakins and His Fellow Artists at the Philadelphia Sketch Club (Philadelphia Sketch Club, 2001). His research into expatriate American artists who settled in France led to a 1982 joint exhibition by PAFA and the Phoenix Art Museum, that also traveled to France.^[7]

He was a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, American University, Tulane University, the University of Texas, and other universities. While serving on the faculties of Colgate University, 1963-1968, and Wesleyan University, 1969-1972, he also directed their art galleries.^[1]

He moved to Washington, D.C. in 1971, to work as a research fellow at what became the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. As curator of the U.S. Capitol, 1976-1980, he oversaw restoration of four of the massive paintings in the Rotunda, and conserved hundreds of architectural drawings by Thomas U. Walter, architect of the Capitol's dome.^[1]

He published numerous articles on American artists, and worked as an independent curator and consultant.

• African Art and the School of Paris, Colgate University, 1966.
• The First Pose: Howard Roberts, Thomas Eakins, and a Century of Philadelphia Nudes, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973.
• American Art in the Making: Preparatory Studies for Masterpieces of American Painting, 1800-1900, Smithsonian Institution, 1976.
• Thomas Eakins, Susan Macdowell Eakins, Elizabeth Macdowell Kenton, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1977.
• Americans in Brittany and Normandy, 1860-1910, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Phoenix Art Museum, 1982, co-curated with James K. Ballinger.
• William Lamb Picknell, 1853–1897, Taggart & Jurgensen Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1991.
• The Ipswich Painters at Home and Abroad: Dow, Kenyon, Mansfield, Richardson, Wendel; Cape Anne Historical Society, 1993, co-curated with Stephanie R. Gaskins.
• Thomas Eakins and His Fellow Artists at the Philadelphia Sketch Club, Philadelphia Sketch Club, 2001. Mark Sullivan contributed an essay to the catalogue.

• "A Benbridge Conversation Piece," Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, 1961.
• "Denis A. Volozan, Philadelphia Neoclassicist," Winterthur Portfolio 4, 1968, 118-128.
• "1876: Turning Point in American Art," Fairmount Park Art Association Annual Report, Philadelphia, 1975.
• "The First Pose, 1876: Turing Point in American Art-Howard Roberts, Thomas Eakins, and a Century of Philadelphia Nudes", W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, New York, 1976, (ISBN 0 393 04447 5)
• "Frieseke in Le Pouldu and Giverny: The Black Gang and the Giverny Group," Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Evolution of an American Expressionism, Telfair Museum of Art, 2001.
• "Imogene Robinson Morrell (1837–1908)," Resource Library Magazine, November 8, 2002.[2]

He married Anne C. Robertson, 27 November 1965. He died of lymphatic cancer in Washington, D.C., 11 April 2006.