Craig Hugh Smyth ’38 *56

Craig died of a heart attack Dec. 22, 2006, in Cresskill, N.J.

He attended Hotchkiss School and majored in classics at Princeton, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated summa cum laude. Craig worked three years as a postgraduate student at Princeton before entering the Naval Reserve in 1942. At the end of World War II, he became director of the Munich Central Collecting Point, where art and culture relics stolen by the Axis armies were collected and returned to their former owners or nations.

Returning from Germany, Craig became a lecturer at the Frick Collection. In 1949 he was awarded a Fulbright research fellowship in Florence, Italy. Here he became aware of the need for art conservation, a cause that he promoted the rest of his life.

Craig received his Ph.D. in art history from Princeton six years after becoming a professor at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. In 1960, Craig became a director of the institute.

He was an honorary trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the director of the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa Tatta in Florence. Over the years he wrote many scholarly articles and books.

Craig is survived by his wife, Barbara Linforth Smyth; two children; and two grandchildren. The class extends sincere condolences to the family.