Duško Kečkemet was born in Supetar, Brač, in 1923. His father was a clerk, and his mother the daughter of a well-known building contractor who built the Split theatre, the Sinj railway line and other things.
He went to high school in Split, and graduated in art history and culture with classical archaeology from the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb.
He was curator in the Gipsotheque (today Glyptotheque) of the Croatian Academy, and was charged with the concern of contemporary Croatian art. He was also curator and later director of the newly-founded Split Municipal Museum (1950-1979). He organised the work of the museum, collection of material and a partial permanent display, endeavouring to annex the premises of the whole of the Papalić Palace to the museum,
He prepared some 30 culture history exhibitions in the museum with pertaining catalogues. He published several print albums; in his youth he was active in literature.
He documented and photographed old Split in detail, collected paintings, prints, old postcards, archival and published texts about Split, posters and theatre programmes. Together with Davor Domančić he museologically established the Maritime Museum in Split and the Museum of Croatian Archaeological Monuments in Split, Trogir City Museum and others. He wrote guides to Split, Brač and Kaštela.
He is a regular collaborator and author of numerous bibliographical entries in editions of the Lexicographic Institute: he worked with the Fine Arts Encyclopaedia, the Art Encyclopaedia of Yugoslavia, the Croatian Lexicon. He has written art reviews and notices of exhibitions in Split. He is a member of many republican commissions and working bodies (Museum Council, Museum Union, Museum Network in Croatia Plan), has worked in the Marjan Conservation Association. From 19079 to 1983 he was a part time lecturer in world and Croatian art at the Faculty of Philosophy in Split; from 1984 to 1993 was a full professor. He has dedicated a large number of monographs and articles to Split and its public monuments. He has studied material and published monographs and scholarly papers about travel writers, painters, architects and archaeologists and their books about Split and Dalmatia.
For the whole of his career he has collected material about the life and art of Ivan Meštrović, and published about 50 related articles. The total bibliography of Kečkemet comes to about 50 books, 150 scholarly articles and 1000 articles of a popular nature, encyclopaedia entries, art catalogues and reviews. His whole bibliography was published by Kulturna baština in 1997, and in an offprint in Kulturna baština, no. 32, 2004.
He was awarded the Annual City of Zagreb Prize, the Annual City of Split Prize, the City of Split Lifetime Achievement and a French Culture Ministry Prize.

NB. Data taken from the questionnaire, material taken from the Personnel Archives of the MDC, and from an interview recorded on June 20, 2006.