Museum Information: Director Biography

Dr. Marion Oettinger, Jr., the Betty and Bob Kelso Director of the San Antonio Museum of Art, is a cultural anthropologist specializing in Latin America. 

With the Museum since 1985, Oettinger also continues to serve as curator of the Latin American Art collection. Between 1996 and 1998, he was Project Director for the installation of the Museum’s newly inaugurated Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art, the most comprehensive treatment of Latin American art in the United States. Oettinger has lived and worked in various parts of the Latin world for over twenty-five years, conducting research in Mexico, Central and South America, Spain, and countries of the Caribbean.  His current research deals with maritime votive art from Europe and the Americas.  He also continues his research on Spanish folk art and its transformation in the Americas. Additionally, Oettinger has served as Project Director and co-Curator for Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits.  This groundbreaking exhibition on Latin American portraiture opened in New York in 2004 and toured four other cities nationwide.  He is the author of numerous books and articles and has lectured widely in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.  His most recent books are Folk Treasures of Mexico: The Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection (Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1990), The Folk Art of Latin America: Visiones del Pueblo (Dutton, New York, 1992), and The Folk Art of Spain and the Americas: El Alma del Pueblo (Abbeyville, 1997).  Oettinger has taught at Cornell University, Occidental College, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico.  He has been a recipient of research grants from the National Geographic Society, the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation.  In 1979, he was awarded a senior research fellowship by the Fulbright program, and, in 1992, he received an Imagineering Award from the Mind Science Foundation.