Nathan Thomas Whitman ’47

Nathan Thomas Whitman ’47 died on August 28, 2004, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Born on March 17, 1925, in Rome, NY, he prepared for college at Bridgewater (MA) High School and became a member of Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity at Bowdoin. Following his graduation in June of 1946 summa cum laude and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, he did graduate work at Harvard University, from which he received a master of arts degree in 1947 and a doctor of philosophy degree in 1955. He joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in 1950 and became a full professor in 1968. He served Michigan’s Department of History of Art in many administrative capacities, including as chair, director of graduate studies, master’s adviser, director of the honors program, director of the program for departmental undergraduate majors, and departmental bibliographer. He was also a member of the fine arts research committee of the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan. He was a specialist in the architecture of Renaissance and Baroque Italy and in the art and architecture of Renaissance and Baroque France. He was the author of The Drawings of Raymond Lafarge and in 1983 co-curated an exhibition on papal medals, accompanied by a scholarly catalogue, which was shown at Mount Holyoke College and the University of Chicago. He retired in 1990. Surviving are his wife, Gretchen Whitman, and his sister, Ann Whitman.