The New York Times remembers Everett Ellin who began his career as a lawyer, a clerk to a California Supreme Court Justice, a talent agent, an art dealer and eventually a museum official before becoming a pioneer of art information technology:

As the first executive director ofthe Museum Computer Network, a nonprofit organization begun in 1967, he helped bring about the reluctant marriage between the conservative world of art museums and wild frontier of information technology.

The marriage prefigured the ready electronic access to museums and their holdings that is taken for granted today.

“Few bastions of the humanities have withstood the march of technology more tenaciously than the art museum,” Mr. Ellin wrote in a journal article in 1969. “But now, at long last, the computer has entered the house of the Muse and — like the man who came to dinner — the guest is here to stay. It would behoove the host to know something about his visitor’s care and feeding.”

Everett Ellin Dies at 82; Helped Computerize Art Catalogs (New York Times)