John Boardman (art historian)
Sir John Boardman OBE FBA (/ˈbɔːrdmən/; 20 August 1927 – 23 May 2024) was a British classical archaeologist and art historian of ancient Greek art.[1]
Personal life and education[edit]
Boardman was born in Essex on 20 August 1927.[2] He was educated at Chigwell School (1938–1945); then 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. He married Sheila Stanford in 1952 (d. 2005), and had two children, Julia and Mark. He died on 23 May 2024, at the age of 96.[3][2]
Career[edit]
On his return to England in 1955, Boardman took up the post of Assistant Keeper at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, thus beginning his lifelong affiliation with 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.[4] There 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, and was thereafter Emeritus Professor.[5]
Boardman was a Fellow of the British Academy, from which he received the Kenyon Medal in 1995.[6] He was awarded the Onassis Prize for Humanities in 2009. He was 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 carried out archaeological excavations at many sites, including in Smyrna, Crete, Emporio in Chios and at Tocra in Libya. His voluminous publications focus primarily on the art and architecture of ancient Greece, particularly sculpture, engraved gems and painted vases.
Boardman wrote the book The Greeks Overseas,[7] on the ancient Greek diaspora throughout the Mediterranean, in which Greek populations from the Aegean region, Greek coastal mainland and Western Turkey settled the coastal regions of Italy, North Africa, southern France, reaching as far as southern Spain. The book has now undergone four editions, as new archaeological research emerges.[8]
The Cretan Collection in Oxford (1961)