Louisa Dresser was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, the daughter of Frank Farnum Dresser and Josephine Lincoln Dresser. Through her mother"s family, she was descended from Levi Lincoln, Senior and Levi Lincoln, Junior., governors of Massachusetts.
She graduated from Vassar College in 1929.
She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1956 for her studies. She pursued further studies at the Fogg Art Museum, and the Courtauld Institute in London. During World World War II she was appointed acting director of the museum.
In 1949 she became curator of collections, and she continued in that role until her retirement in 1972.
During her tenure as curator, Dresser wrote Seventeenth-Century Painting in New England (1935), remembered as "a study marked by careful scholarship that spawned research and exhibitions by other scholars." She was one of the 1956 Guggenheim Fellowship recipients. In 1964 she became the third woman elected to membership in the American Antiquarian Society.
After retirement, Campbell continued editing the museum"s catalogs, and served as an honorary trustee. She was one of the founders of the Worcester Center for Crafts, wrote a history of the town"s historic Salisbury Mansion, and was otherwise active in the community.
