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Roy Strong
Sir Roy Colin Strong, CH, FRSL, FSA (born 23 August 1935) is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has served as director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Strong was knighted in 1982, and made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 2016.
Roy Colin Strong was born at Winchmore Hill (at that time in Middlesex; it later became part of the London Borough of Enfield), the third son of hat manufacturer's commercial traveller George Edward Clement Strong, and Mabel Ada Strong (née Smart). He was raised in "an Enfield terrace sans books, with linoleum 'in shades of unutterable green'", and attended nearby Edmonton County School, a grammar school in Edmonton.
Strong graduated with a first-class honours degree in history from Queen Mary College, University of London. He then earned his PhD degree from the Warburg Institute and became a research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. He put aside his passionate interest in the portraiture of Queen Elizabeth I in order to write a thesis on Elizabethan Court Pageantry, supervised by Renaissance scholar Dame Frances Yates, "'who [he says] restructured and re-formed my thinking'". In 2007, Strong listed his qualifications as DLitt PhD FSA.
He became assistant keeper of the National Portrait Gallery in London in 1959. In 1967, aged 32, he was appointed its director, a post he held until 1973. He set about transforming its conservative image with a series of extrovert shows, including "600 Cecil Beaton portraits 1928–1968". Dedicated to the culture of the 1960s and 1970s, Strong went on to amuse audiences at the V&A in 1974 with his collection of fedora hats, kipper ties and maxi coats. By regularly introducing new exhibitions, he doubled attendance.
Reflecting on his time as director of the National Portrait Gallery, Strong pinpointed the Beaton exhibition as a turning point in the gallery's history. "The public flocked to the exhibition and its run was extended twice. The queues to get in made national news. The Gallery had arrived," Strong wrote in the catalogue to Beaton Portraits, the more recent exhibition of Beaton that ran at the gallery until 31 May 2004.
In 1973, aged 38, he became the youngest director of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London, following John Pope-Hennessy who moved to the British Museum. Strong proved something of a polarising figure; he was condemned by Hennessy in his 1991 autobiography for "a thirteen years reign that reduced the museum and its staff to a level from which it will not recover for many years". During his tenure, until 1987, he presided over its exhibitions The Destruction of the Country House (1974, with Marcus Binney and John Harris), Change and Decay: the future of our churches (1977), and The Garden: a Celebration of a Thousand Years of British Gardening (1979), all of which have been credited with boosting their conservationist agendas. In 1977, following government cuts, he oversaw the closure of the much-lamented Circulation Department of the V&A, which organised tours of the collection around Britain. In 1980, "he was awarded the prestigious Shakespeare Prize by the FVS Foundation of Hamburg in recognition of his contribution to the arts in the UK". In 2003, he was awarded the Royal Photographic Society's President's Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography.
Among other work for television, in 2008, Strong hosted a six-part TV reality series, The Diets That Time Forgot. He acted as the Director of the fictitious Institute of Physical Culture, where nine volunteers spent 24 days testing three weight-loss diets and fitness regimes that were popular in the late Victorian era (William Banting and his no-sugar diet), the Edwardian era (Horace Fletcher and his chewing diet), and the "roaring" Twenties (Dr Lulu Hunt Peters and her calorie-counting diet). The weekly series was first aired on 18 March on Channel 4.
Strong is a notable scholar of Renaissance art, especially English Elizabethan portraiture, on which he has written many books and articles (see bibliography section). His diaries from 1967 to 1987 were published in 1999, as was The Spirit of Britain: A Narrative History of the Arts, a widely acclaimed 700-page popular history of the arts in Britain through two millennia. In 2005, he published Coronation: A History of Kingship and the British Monarchy. He had a monthly column in the Financial Times for much of the 1970s and 1980s, and has written articles for many other magazines and newspapers. In 2000, he wrote Gardens Through the Ages and is a patron of the Plantation Garden, Norwich.
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Roy Strong
Sir Roy Colin Strong, CH, FRSL, FSA (born 23 August 1935) is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has served as director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Strong was knighted in 1982, and made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 2016.
Roy Colin Strong was born at Winchmore Hill (at that time in Middlesex; it later became part of the London Borough of Enfield), the third son of hat manufacturer's commercial traveller George Edward Clement Strong, and Mabel Ada Strong (née Smart). He was raised in "an Enfield terrace sans books, with linoleum 'in shades of unutterable green'", and attended nearby Edmonton County School, a grammar school in Edmonton.
Strong graduated with a first-class honours degree in history from Queen Mary College, University of London. He then earned his PhD degree from the Warburg Institute and became a research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. He put aside his passionate interest in the portraiture of Queen Elizabeth I in order to write a thesis on Elizabethan Court Pageantry, supervised by Renaissance scholar Dame Frances Yates, "'who [he says] restructured and re-formed my thinking'". In 2007, Strong listed his qualifications as DLitt PhD FSA.
He became assistant keeper of the National Portrait Gallery in London in 1959. In 1967, aged 32, he was appointed its director, a post he held until 1973. He set about transforming its conservative image with a series of extrovert shows, including "600 Cecil Beaton portraits 1928–1968". Dedicated to the culture of the 1960s and 1970s, Strong went on to amuse audiences at the V&A in 1974 with his collection of fedora hats, kipper ties and maxi coats. By regularly introducing new exhibitions, he doubled attendance.
Reflecting on his time as director of the National Portrait Gallery, Strong pinpointed the Beaton exhibition as a turning point in the gallery's history. "The public flocked to the exhibition and its run was extended twice. The queues to get in made national news. The Gallery had arrived," Strong wrote in the catalogue to Beaton Portraits, the more recent exhibition of Beaton that ran at the gallery until 31 May 2004.
In 1973, aged 38, he became the youngest director of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London, following John Pope-Hennessy who moved to the British Museum. Strong proved something of a polarising figure; he was condemned by Hennessy in his 1991 autobiography for "a thirteen years reign that reduced the museum and its staff to a level from which it will not recover for many years". During his tenure, until 1987, he presided over its exhibitions The Destruction of the Country House (1974, with Marcus Binney and John Harris), Change and Decay: the future of our churches (1977), and The Garden: a Celebration of a Thousand Years of British Gardening (1979), all of which have been credited with boosting their conservationist agendas. In 1977, following government cuts, he oversaw the closure of the much-lamented Circulation Department of the V&A, which organised tours of the collection around Britain. In 1980, "he was awarded the prestigious Shakespeare Prize by the FVS Foundation of Hamburg in recognition of his contribution to the arts in the UK". In 2003, he was awarded the Royal Photographic Society's President's Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography.
Among other work for television, in 2008, Strong hosted a six-part TV reality series, The Diets That Time Forgot. He acted as the Director of the fictitious Institute of Physical Culture, where nine volunteers spent 24 days testing three weight-loss diets and fitness regimes that were popular in the late Victorian era (William Banting and his no-sugar diet), the Edwardian era (Horace Fletcher and his chewing diet), and the "roaring" Twenties (Dr Lulu Hunt Peters and her calorie-counting diet). The weekly series was first aired on 18 March on Channel 4.
Strong is a notable scholar of Renaissance art, especially English Elizabethan portraiture, on which he has written many books and articles (see bibliography section). His diaries from 1967 to 1987 were published in 1999, as was The Spirit of Britain: A Narrative History of the Arts, a widely acclaimed 700-page popular history of the arts in Britain through two millennia. In 2005, he published Coronation: A History of Kingship and the British Monarchy. He had a monthly column in the Financial Times for much of the 1970s and 1980s, and has written articles for many other magazines and newspapers. In 2000, he wrote Gardens Through the Ages and is a patron of the Plantation Garden, Norwich.