The
Frick Collection announced today the appointment of Stephen J. Bury to the position of Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian at the Frick Art Reference Library, effective May 2010. Dr. Bury is the Deputy Director and Head of European and American Collections at the British Library. He is also responsible for the Maps, Music and Philatelic Collections there.
EducationStephen J. Bury studied history at Balliol College, Oxford. He received advanced degrees in Library and Information Studies at University College, London and the University of Oxford. Bury completed his master's degree in Victorian Studies at Birkbeck College, London, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation on art critic and social thinker John Ruskin (1819-1900).
ExperienceBury taught and lectured in the 1980s and 1990s at the Chelsea College of Art & Design, Royal College of Art, Central St. Martins College of Art & Design and Camberwall College of Arts. His courses ranged from printmaking to book arts to fine arts.
Dr. Bury curated some 14 special exhibitions on artists' books for the Chelsea College of Art & Design, the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Dundee and the London Institute Gallery. At the British Library, he organized
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 wrote the shows' catalogues and contributed to various publications, including
Art Monthly,
Print Quarterly,
The Times Literary Supplement and others. He was also Chair of the Board of Trustees at Matt’s Gallery, London and Book Works.
Prior to joining the British Library, Bury was Head of Learning Resources at the Chelsea College of Art & Design. He became the British Library's Head of Modern English Collections in 2000. In 2002, he was promoted to Head of European and American Collections. He currently leads the institution's involvement in the European Library and Europeanna, the European Library Management Board & Contacts Group, the Conference of European National Libraries/Federation of European Publishers and the UK National Book Committeee. Bury is the Chair of the ARLIS (Art Libraries Society) UK & Ireland National Co-ordination Committee as well as a member of the Arts & Humanities Research Council’s Peer Review College.
At the British Library, Dr. Bury leads the Mellon-funded 21st Century Curator Project, a program that encourages staff to continue learning with new technologies in the field while promoting traditional skills such as historical bibliography, paleography and others in the library school curriculum. He also runs the Web Archiving Programme that deals with live online and ephemeral resources.