Full Name: Stratford, Neil
Gender: male
Date Born: 1938
Place Born: London, Greater London, England, UK
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Subject Area(s): Antique, the, antiquities (object genre), and Medieval (European)
Career(s): curators
Overview
Medievalist; Keeper of Medieval and Later Antiquities, British Museum, 1975-1998. Stratford attended Manor House school, Horsham, Sussex from 1946-1951 before entering Marlborough College in 1951 where he studied Classics. He served in the British military (Coldstream Guards) between 1956 and 1958. In 1958 he entered Magdalene College, Cambridge University, receiving his B. A. in 1961. Stratford continued study at the Courtauld Institute in 1963 working on a dissertation (never completed) under Christopher Hohler on the Romanesque sculpture at the Church of La Madeleine, Vézelay. In 1969 he joined Westfield College, London, as a lecturer. Stratford was appointed Keeper of Medieval and Later Antiquities at the British Museum in 1975. He participated as a member of the committee to develop the Corpus of Romanesque sculpture in Britain and Ireland and online inventory of Romanesque art, begun in 1988. As the Leverhulme Senior Research Fellow at the British Academy in 1991, he worked on the international project, Corpus de la sculpture de Cluny. Stratford remained at the British Museum until 1998 when he retired as Keeper Emeritus. The following year he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. In 2002-2003 he was visiting professeur d’histoire de l’art du Moyen-âge at the École des Chartes. Stratford’s work on Vézelay and Saint-Lazare d’Autun resulted in a more precise chronology of those sculptural monuments.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation, never completed:] Romanesque Sculpture of Vézelay. Courtauld Institute, University of London, 1969; Northern Romanesque Enamel. volume 2 of, Catalogue of Medieval Enamels in the British Museum. London: British Museum Press, 1993; Medieval Enamels: Masterpieces from the Keir Collection. London: British Museum, 1981; edited, Romanesque and Gothic: Essays for George Zarnecki. 2 vols. Wolfeboro, NH: Boydell Press, 1987; and Oddy, W. A., and La Niece, Susan. Romanesque Metalwork: Copper Alloys and their Decoration. London : British Museum Publications, 1986; and Saulnier-Pernuit, Lydwine. La sculpture oubliée de Vézelay. Geneva: Droz, 1984; The Lewis Chessmen and the Enigma of the Hoard. London : British Museum Press, 1997; Studies in Burgundian Romanesque Sculpture. 2 vols. London: Pindar Press, 1998.
Sources
[personal information]; Membres de l’Académie Francais, 2002, http://www.aibl.fr/fr/membres/archives/arch_nominations.htm;