Stephen J. Bury

Stephen J. Bury
Stephen Bury in the reading room of the Frick Art Reference Library, New York
Born	1954 Darwen, Lancashire, United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Education	University of Oxford; Birkbeck, University of London
Known for	Art historian, librarian

Stephen J. (John) Bury (born 12 May 1954) is an art historian and the Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian of the Frick Art Reference Library in New York City. He is known for his scholarship on artists' books, although his research interests also include the literature of art, the impact of the digital on the future of humanities, and the use of the past in the project of modernism.

Bury received his BA and MA in Modern History from the University of Oxford, where he was a Brackenbury Scholar of Balliol College. He studied librarianship at University College London and Victorian Studies at Birkbeck, University of London where he wrote a PhD on John Ruskin titled "John Ruskin and History" (defended 1990).

Bury began his career in 1979 as the assistant librarian of Chelsea School of Art, London, where he also taught art history and fine art practice. He became Head of Modern English Collections at the British Library in 2000 and in 2002, a Deputy Director as Head of European and American Collections, Maps, Music and Philatelic. He was Senior Responsible officer for the National Preservation Office from 2003 to 2009 and the UK Web Archiving Program from 2008 to 2010. Bury also chaired the boards of Bookworks and Matt’s Gallery, London. In 2010, he assumed his present position at the Frick Art Reference Library. Currently, he is a board member of the Exhibitions Committee of the Grolier Club, New York and the Center for Book Arts in New York, and is an active member of the planning committee for the Contemporary Artists' Books Conference, which is held annually in collaboration with the NY Art Book Fair. Bury also served as Advisory Editor to Oxford Art Online from 2011 to 2014.