BOARDMAN, John 1927-

PERSONAL: Born August 20, 1927, in Ilford, England; son of Frederick Archibald and Clara (Wells) Boardman; married Sheila Joan Lyndon Stanford, October 26, 1952; children: Julia, Mark. Ethnicity: "British." Education: Magdalene College, Cambridge, B.A., 1948, M.A., 1951. Hobbies and other interests: Reading, drawing.

ADDRESSES: Home—11 Park St., Woodstock, Oxford OX20 1SJ, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: British School at Athens, Athens, Greece, assistant director, 1952-55; Oxford University, Oxford, England, assistant keeper at Ashmolean Museum, 1955-59, reader in Classical Archaeology, 1959-78, Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art, 1978-94, professor emeritus, 1994—; University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, Geddes-Harrower Professor, 1974; Royal Academy of Arts, professor of ancient history, 1990—. Merton College, fellow, 1963-78, subwarden, 1975-78, honorary fellow, 1978; British Academy, fellow, 1969—; Lincoln College, fellow, 1978—. Visiting professor, Columbia University, 1965, Australian Institute of Archaeology, 1987. Corresponding fellow, Bavarian Academy of Sciences, 1969, and Athens Academy, 1997; foreign member, Royal Danish Academy, 1979; fellow, Institute of Etruscan Studies, Florence, Italy, 1983, and Austrian and German Archaeological Institutes; honorary fellow, Magdalene College, Cambridge, 1984, Lincoln College, Oxford, 1995; member of Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres Institut de France, 1991; foreign member, Academi dei Lincei Rome, 1999, and Russian Academy of Sciences, 2003. Conducted excavations at Chios, 1953-55, and Tocra, Libya, 1964-65. Military service: British Army, Intelligence Corps, 1950-52; became second lieutenant.

MEMBER: Society of Antiquaries (fellow), British Academy (fellow), Hellenic Society, Libya Exploration Society, Archaeological Society of Athens (vice president, 1998), American Philosophical Society (foreign member), Athenaeum Club.

AWARDS, HONORS: Cromer Greek Prize, British Academy, 1959; Kenyon Medal, British Academy, 1995. Honorary doctorates from University of Athens, 1991, and University of Paris, 1994.

WRITINGS:

(Translator) Spyridon N. Marinatos, Crete and Mycenae, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1960.

The Cretan Collection in Oxford: The Dictaean Cave and Iron Age Crete, Clarendon Press (Oxford, England), 1961.

Island Gems: A Study of Greek Seals in the Geometric and Early Archaic Periods, Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies (London, England), 1963.

(With Leonard Robert Palmer) On the Knossos Tablets, Clarendon Press (Oxford, England), 1963.

Greek Art, Praeger (New York, NY), 1964, 4th edition, Thames & Hudson (New York, NY), 1996.

The Greeks Overseas: The Archaeology of Their Early Colonies and Trade, Penguin (Harmondsworth, England), 1964, 4th edition published as The Greeks Overseas: Their Early Colonies and Trade, Thames & Hudson (New York, NY), 1999.

(With Jose Doerig, Werner Fuchs, and Max Hirmer) Die griechische Kunst, Hirmer Verlag, 1966, translation published as Greek Art and Architecture, Abrams (New York, NY), 1967, published as The Art and Architecture of Ancient Greece, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1967.

(With John Hayes) Excavations at Tocra, 1963-1965, Thames & Hudson (London, England), Volume 1. The Archaic Deposits, 1966, Volume 2. Archaic Deposits II and Later Deposits, 1973.

Excavations in Chios, 1952-1955: Greek Emporio, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1967.

Pre-Classical: From Crete to Archaic Greece, Penguin (New York, NY), 1967.

Archaic Greek Gems: Schools and Artists in the Sixth and Early Fifth Centuries B.C., Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 1968.

Engraved Gems: The Ionides Collection, photographs by Robert L. Wilkins, Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 1968.

Greek Painted Vases: Catalogue of an Exhibition in the Mappin Art Gallery, Mappin Art Gallery (Sheffield, England), 1968.

Greek Gems and Finger Rings: Early Bronze Age to Late Classical, photographs by Robert L. Wilkins, Abrams (New York, NY), 1970.

(With Donna C. Kurtz) Greek Burial Customs, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1971.

Athenian Black Figure Vases, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1974, published as Athenian Black Figure Vases: A Handbook, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1974, Thames & Hudson (New York, NY), 1988.

(With Eugenio La Rocca) Eros in Greece (originally published in 1975), photographs by Antonia Mulas, Erotic Art Book Society (New York, NY), 1978.

Intaglios and Rings: Greek, Etruscan, and Eastern, from a Private Collection, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1975.

Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1975.

Athenian Red Figure Vases: The Archaic Period: A Handbook, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1975, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1979.

(With Ashmolean Museum) Corpus vasorum antiquorum: Great Britain, Oxford—Ashmolean, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1975.

(With Diana Scarisbrick) The Ralph Harari Collection of Finger Rings, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1977.

(With Marie-Louise Vollenweider) Catalogue of the Engraved Gems and Finger Rings: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Volume 1. Greek and Etruscan, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1978.

Greek Sculpture: The Archaic Period: A Handbook, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1978, revised edition, Thames & Hudson (New York, NY), 1988.

(With Martin Robertson) Corpus vasorum antiquorum: Great Britain, Northampton—Castle Ashby, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1979.

(With Miriam Astruc and Jorge H. Hernandez) Escarabeos de piedra procedentes de Ibiza, Ministerio e Cultura (Madrid, Spain), 1984.

Greek Sculpture: The Classical Period: A Handbook, Thames & Hudson (New York, NY), 1985.

The Parthenon and Its Sculptures, photographs by David Finn, University of Texas Press (Austin, TX), 1985.

Athenian Red Figure Vases: The Classic Period: A Handbook (continuation of Athenian Red Figure Vases: The Archaic Period: A Handbook), Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1989.

The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1994.

Greek Sculpture: The Late Classical Period and Sculpture in Colonies and Overseas, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1994.

The Great God Pan: The Survival of an Image: Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1998.

Early Greek Vase Painting: 11th-6th Centuries BC: A Handbook, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1998.

Greek Gems and Finger Rings: Early Bronze to Late Classical, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 2000.

Persia and the West: An Archaeological Investigation of the Genesis of Achaemenid Art, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 2000.

The History of Greek Vases: Potters, Painters and Pictures, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 2001.

The Archaeloogy of Nostalgia, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 2002.

Classical Phoenician Scarabs, Beazley Archive and Archaeopress (Oxford, England), 2003.

(With C. Wagner) A Collection of Classical and Eastern Engraved Gems and Cameos, Beazley Archive and Archaeopress (Oxford, England), 2003.

Also contributor to scholarly journals and to Lefkandi I, the Iron Age, edited by M. R. Popham and L. H. Sackett, Thames & Hudson, 1979. Featured art expert on Art of the Western World: Program I, The Classical Ideal, produced and directed by Geoffrey Dunlop and Bayley Silleck for New York City television station WNET, published by Intellimation (Santa Barbara, CA), 1989. Boardman's work has been translated and published in other countries, including Italy.

editor

Thomas James Dunbabin, The Greeks and Their Eastern Neighbours: Studies in the Relations between Greece and the Countries of the Near East in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries B.C., Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies (London, England), 1957, reprinted, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1979.

The Date of the Knossos Tablets (bound with On the Knossos Tablets: The Find-Places of the Knossos Tablets by L. R. Palmer), Clarendon Press, 1963.

(With M. A. Brown and T. G. E. Powell) The European Community in Later Prehistory: Studies in Honour of C. F. C. Hawkes, Rowman & Littlefield (Totowa, NJ), 1971.

The Cambridge Ancient History, Volumes 3-4, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1977.

(With C. E. Vaphopoulou-Richardson) Chios: A Conference at the Homereion in Chios, 1984, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1986.

(With Jasper Griffin and Oswyn Murray) The Oxford History of the Classical World, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1986, published as two paperback volumes, 1988.

(With Jasper Griffin and Oswyn Murray) The Oxford History of Greece and the Hellenistic World, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1991, published as The Oxford Illustrated History of Greece and the Hellenistic World, 2001.

(With Jasper Griffin and Oswyn Murray) The Oxford History of the Roman World, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1991, published as The Oxford Illustrated History of Greece and the Roman World, 2001.

The Oxford History of Classical Art, Oxford University Press, 1993.

(With Gocha R. Tsetskhladze) S. L. Solovyov, Ancient Berezan: The Architecture, History, and Culture of the First Greek Colony in the Northern Black Sea, Brill (Boston, MA), 1999.

(With Sergei L. Solovyov, Gocha R. Tsetskhladze) Northern Pontic Antiquities in the State Hermitage Museum, Brill (Boston, MA), 2001.

Editor of Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1958-65; coeditor of Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 1982—; and coeditor of Oxford Monographs in Classical Archaeology; coeditor of Lexicon Iconographicum.

WORK IN PROGRESS: The World of Ancient Art.

SIDELIGHTS: John Boardman is the author or editor of numerous works dealing with classical and archaic Greek art. Reviews of Boardman's work have commonly given high praise for the books' illustrations and positively recognized Boardman's succinct, effective prose. A Times Literary Supplement critic offered the following for Greek Art: "The text is skillfully interwoven with 251 excellent illustrations….Thepace is necessarily brisk, but the author has taken great trouble to avoid the hackneyed approach. Even when he is speaking of well-known statues, temples and vases, his commentary is packed with fresh observation." Of the same book, Library Journal contributor F. D. Lazenby wrote, "Though compact, [it] is replete with information and discriminating comment, and sometimes subtle observations. It is lively, knowledgeable history….The excellent photographs areclosely integrated with a text which is never marred by deviations into cloudy abstractions."

The illustrations in Engraved Gems: The Ionides Collection, according to an Economist critic, are also "ample reason for anyone to be drawn to the book." However, the critic faulted Boardman's inability to reach an amateur audience: "This unusual book attempts, presumably, to attract the attention of people who are not collectors…. Lovely as it is, and fascinating as are the glimpses it gives of the beauties of this specialist's world the book is not altogether successful as a work of popularization."

Boardman's Archaic Greek Gems: Schools and Artists in the Sixth and Early Fifth Centuries B.C., which Paul von Khrum described in Library Journal as a "scholarly work, the result of years of painstaking research," was commended by a Times Literary Supplement reviewer not only for being "exceptionally well illustrated," but also for "map[ping] out the work of local schools and studios with a sure touch, drawing on a wide range of comparative material (especially coins), and adding several new attributions to the work of the few known and named engravers." The Times Literary Supplement contributor wrote, "Far from being designed for the general reader, [Archaic Greek Gems] demands the utmost concentration of the professional archaeologist. Much of the material is hitherto unpublished or inaccessible…. Many of theideas and hypotheses are equally new, and will need to be weighed carefully."

Again recognizing Boardman's expertise, another Times Literary Supplement reviewer called Greek Gems and Finger Rings: Early Bronze Age to Late Classical a "magnificent work … scholarly, readable, and beautifully produced." And in Athenian Black Figure Vases, "Boardman demonstrates a broad and penetrating grasp of Greek art and archaeology," stated another Times Literary Supplement writer. An Economist contributor explained that "Boardman's achievement [in Athenian Black Figure Vases] is to bring present knowledge, including his own contributions, into the form of a handbook … for connoisseurs and students," further remarking that "it is admirably done…. Naturally it is not easy or fluent read-ing—no handbook of this kind could be—but all students will find it useful for their work, and all connoisseurs for skimming and reference."

Called "Mr. Greek Vases" by a Publishers Weekly contributor, Boardman has written more books on the subject than almost any expert, his The History of Greek Vases: Potters, Painters and Pictures being the most recent addition. This volume thoroughly explains how the Greeks came to create and decorate their pottery and how the influence of their artwork was dispersed to other regions of the world. The Publishers Weekly reviewer asserted that Boardman's "masterful and classy explications of what might in other bands seem dry and dusty archaeological material are a joy to read."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Choice, May, 1972.

Classical World, April, 1965; September, 1979.

Economist, April 27, 1968; July 27, 1974.

Library Journal, February 15, 1965, F. D. Lazenby, review of Greek Art; October 1, 1968, Paul von Khrum, review of Archaeic Greek Gems: Schools and Artists in the Sixth and Early Fifth CenturiesB.C.; October 15, 1974; April 15, 1997, Mary Morgan Smith, review of Greek Art, p. 76; September 1, 2001, Mary Morgan Smith, review of The History of Greek Vases: Potters, Painters and Pictures, p. 172.

New Statesman, February 19, 1965.

Publishers Weekly, May 28, 2001, review of The History of Greek Vases, p. 59.

Times Literary Supplement, January 7, 1965; August 22, 1968; March 12, 1971; August 23, 1974.