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.
He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the third son of University of Pennsylvania professor Thorsten Sellin and Amy Anderson. He and his two elder brothers attended Quaker schools. As a teenager, Sellin 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. Sellin received a bachelor's degree, 1952 magna cum laude, and a master's degree in art history, 1956, from the University of Pennsylvania. 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.
Sellin 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. He completed a doctorate in art history at the University of Pennsylvania, 1968.
Sellin's 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. 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). Sellin's 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.
Sellin 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.
Sellin 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. He published numerous articles on American artists, and worked as an independent curator and consultant.
David Sellin married Anne C. Robertson on November 27, 1965. He died of lymphatic cancer in Washington, D.C., 11 April 2006. He was survived by his widow Anne R. Sellin, and his brothers Theodore Sellin of Washington, D.C. and Eric Sellin of Philadelphia.