|
Dr. Stephen J. Bury Appointed to the Post of
Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian
at the Frick Art Reference Library
 The Frick
Collection is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Stephen J.
Bury to the post of Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian at the
Frick Art Reference Library. For the past ten years, he has been
at the British Library, the national library of the United Kingdom, and
one of the world's greatest research institutions, where he is a Deputy
Director and Head of European and American Collections, as well as
Maps, Music, and Philatelic Collections. Previously, Dr. Bury was
Head of Learning Resources at the Chelsea College of Art & Design,
London. Comments Anne L. Poulet, Director of The Frick
Collection, "Dr. Bury brings to this leadership position an
exceptional dual perspective. He is both an art historian- who
understands first hand the needs of those who teach, research, and
curate- as well as an internationally regarded librarian. An
active participant on numerous professional commissions as well as
dynamic division head of the British Library, he is a great strategic
thinker in a rapidly changing field. Stephen Bury has developed a
keen understanding in areas of mutual interest to the Frick, among them
digitization, collection sharing, storage, and encouraging greater use
of new technologies by staff. Furthermore, the nature of the
collections he oversees at the British Library, being both European and
American, dovetails beautifully with the scope of our holdings and
initiatives. With his arrival in May, we know that the Frick Art
Reference Library will benefit greatly from Dr. Bury's insights as well
as from the broad connections he has developed through years of highly
engaged service and scholarship."
Adds Dr. Bury,
"The Frick Art Reference Library is internationally well-regarded,
not just for its rich resources, but for the very proactive approach
the institution has taken in light of the changing universe of
libraries and the needs of the audiences they serve. The Frick
has played a notable role in exploring such important ventures as
digitization and collection sharing, and we are of like mind that the
future of libraries is an exciting one. I am thrilled to have the
opportunity to lead the remarkably talented staff at this venerable
research center. At the same time, the post represents a
wonderfully appealing opportunity for me to return to an art historical
focus, that area of study being at the core of my academic
background."
About Stephen Bury
Dr. Bury joined the British Library in 2000 as
Head of Modern English Collections, and was promoted in 2002 to Head of
European and American Collections. In a role of ever-increasing
responsibility, Bury has overseen a large staff and substantial budgets
for library acquisitions and collections development. During his
tenure, he has been a driving force behind a number of forward-looking
initiatives, from digitization, to collaboration and resource-sharing,
to critical and state-of-the-art solutions for storage. His
engagement in these issues extends beyond the walls of the British
Library. He leads the institution’s involvement on a number of
professional bodies, including The European Library and Europeanna, The
European Library Management Board & Contacts Group, Conference of
European National Libraries/Federation of European Publishers, and the
UK National Book Committee. Bury is also the Chair of ARLIS (Art
Libraries Society) UK & Ireland National Co-ordination Committee,
and is a member of the Arts & Humanities Research Council’s Peer
Review College.
At the British Library he leads the
Mellon-funded 21st Century Curator Project, a program that
encourages staff to remain engaged in learning and to take advantage of
new technologies entering the field, while helping them pass along
traditional skills that are disappearing from the library school
curriculum (historical bibliography, paleography, and so forth).
Bury also leads the Web Archiving Programme, created to address the
fact that many resources today live online and are ephemeral.
Without efforts to preserve them, a digital black hole may occur.
The selective UK archive is available at
www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/.
American Collections at the British Library
The British Library houses the foremost
collection of American books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, and
sound recordings outside of the United States. Stephen Bury
oversees not only these holdings, but also line-manages the British
Library’s Eccles Centre of American Studies. Founded in 1991, the
Centre has two broad aims: to promote the Library’s North American materials
and to support American Studies in schools and universities. His
familiarity with such holdings will undoubtedly be an asset to the
Frick Art Reference Library, given the scope of its resources and its
own celebrated initiative, the Center for the History of Collecting in
America.
At Once an Art Historian and a Librarian
Dr. Bury comes to the Frick exceptionally
sensitive to the needs of the position, given his dual background as a
librarian and an art historian. As an undergraduate, Bury studied
history at Balliol College, Oxford, and went on to earn advanced
degrees in Library and Information Studies at University College,
London, and the University of Oxford. Subsequently he completed
his master’s degree in Victorian Studies and undertook doctoral studies
in Art History at Birkbeck College, London, where he wrote his PhD
dissertation on art critic and social thinker John Ruskin.
Interested in the practice of making art as well, he taught and
lectured through the 1980s and 1990s at the Chelsea College of Art
& Design, Royal College of Art, Central St. Martins College of Art
& Design, and Camberwell College of Arts. His courses ranged
from printmaking to book arts to fine arts. He has supervised PhD
candidates at most of these schools as well as been the external
examiner of PhDs at the University of Leeds, Goldsmith’s College, and
the University of Sheffield. As a curator, Bury has presented
some fourteen exhibitions. He organized several shows on artists’
books for the Chelsea College of Art & Design and has also curated
for the London Institute Gallery and for the Centre for Contemporary
Arts, Dundee. His British Library exhibitions include Translation/Illustration
(2000), Iris Murdoch (2002), 1922 (2002, with Colin St.
John Wilson), and Breaking the Rules: The Printed Face of the
European Avant Garde (2008). Bury has written exhibition
catalogues in conjunction with such projects and contributed to
numerous other publications. He is a frequent editorial
contributor to art journals, and his reviews of exhibitions have
appeared in Art Monthly, Print Quarterly, The Times
Literary Supplement, and elsewhere. He is a former Chair of
the Board of Trustees at Matt’s Gallery, London, and of Book Works.
About the Frick Art Reference Library
The Frick Art Reference Library was founded in
1920 by Helen Clay Frick as a memorial to her father, Henry Clay Frick
(whose art and mansion were bequeathed to the public, later becoming
The Frick Collection, one of the world’s most treasured house
museums). In founding the Library, she vowed to provide a curious
and growing public of art researchers with resources as valuable to
them as her father’s art collection came to be to the world’s art
lovers. The mission of the Library was, and remains, to make
available to a broad community of researchers materials for the study
of art in the Western tradition from the fourth to the mid-twentieth
century. With its emphasis on object-oriented research, the
Library amassed a photoarchive that now boasts images of more than one
million works of art, many of which are unpublished. The Library
owns over 350,000 books, periodicals, online resources, and annotated
auction and exhibition catalogues. The collection is unrivaled in
the United States, and is one of the world’s most valued art research
centers and the most comprehensive resource on the history of
collecting and patronage.
For
more information, contact us at [log in to unmask].
QUICK LINKS
Full Bury Release
The Frick Collection
Contact:
Heidi Rosenau
The Frick Collection
212.547.6866
[log in to unmask]
|