A. Hyatt Mayor was born in Gloucester, Mass. on June 28, 1901. In his early years he traveled to Europe with his mother, Harriet Hyatt Mayor and spent some time at his father's experimental marine biology station at Dry Tortuga, Florida. He graduated from Princeton University in 1922 and after teaching art history for a year at Vassar, he went on to do graduate work at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, after traveling extensively in Europe during the rest of the 1920s.

After working on several New York magazines, Hyatt Mayor joined the staff of Metropolitan Museum in the department of prints in 1932. The same year he married the former Virginia Sluder of St. Louis. In 1946 he was made curator of prints at the Metropolitan and held that position until his retirement. He had two children Alfred and Martha.

Mr. Mayor also served as a trustee of the American Federation of Arts and of Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina. He was president of the Hispanic Society of America from 1955 until his death in 1980. He wrote several books and articles.