John Boardman (archaeologist)

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Sir John Boardman (born August 20, 1927) is a classical archaeologist and art historian, "Britain's most distinguished historian of ancient Greek art." [1]

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[edit] Biography

John Boardman was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read Classics beginning in 1945. After completing two years' national service in the Intelligence Corps he spent three years in Greece, from 1952 to 1955, as the Assistant Director of the British School at Athens.

On his return to England in that year, Boardman took up the post of Assistant Keeper at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, thus beginning his life-long affiliation to it. In 1959 he was appointed Reader in Classical Archaeology in the University of Oxford, and in 1963 was appointed a Fellow of Merton College. Here he remained until his appointment as Lincoln Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology, a position previously held by John Beazley, and the concomitant Fellowship of Lincoln College in 1978. He was knighted in 1989 and retired in 1994.

John Boardman is a Fellow of the British Academy, from whom he received the Kenyon Medal for Classical Studies in 1995.

He is an Honorary Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and of Merton and Lincoln Colleges in Oxford, as well as the holder of many other academic distinctions.

He has carried out archaeological excavations at many sites, including in Smyrna, Crete, Chios and at Tocra in Libya. His voluminous publications focus primarily on the art and architecture of ancient Greece, and in particular on sculpture and vase-painting.

[edit] Selected publications

  • The Oxford History of the Classical World
  • The Oxford History of Classical Art
  • The Greeks Overseas (1st ed. 1964; rev. ed. 1973; 3rd ed. 1980; 4th ed. 1999)
  • The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity, a volume based on his series of Andrew Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC in 1993.
  • Persia and the Greeks (2000)
  • The History of Greek Vases (2001)
  • The Archaeology of Nostalgia (2002)
  • The World of Ancient Art' (2006)

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Interview with Diana Scarisbrick, Apollo Magazine, May 2006

[edit] External links

[edit] References