David Robb (1903-1990) led the History of Art Department at Penn when it was first constituted in the School of Fine Arts and hired most of the first faculty. He co-wrote the textbook used in the survey course, and was recognized as the father of the department.
Medievalist art historian, Robb graduated from Oberlin College 1926 and began his teaching career as an Associate Professor of the history of art from 1930 to 1935 at Colgate University. He was a professor of fine arts at the University of Minnesota from 1935 to 1939. In 1935 he wrote one of the early surveys of the history of art in the United States with J. J. Garrison, his Art of the Western World. It went into many subsequent editions and built a reputation for him as an art history teacher. He moved to the University of Pennsylvania in 1939. Robb continued to study art history at the graduate level, eventually receiving his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1941 under Charles Rufus Morey, then advancing to Professor of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. Robb was president of the Art Association of America in 1960. He retired emeritus in 1974. He was also a Guggenheim fellow and Fulbright scholar. His students included Samuel Y. Edgerton.
https://arthistorians.info/robbd/