Richard Frederick Drury (born 3 September 1967 in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England) is an art critic and art historian, a curator of modern and contemporary art, a gallery worker, translator, editor and university teacher.
In 1980–1986, Drury attended Christ’s Hospital, a private boarding school in Horsham, West Sussex, where he did his A levels in Russian, French and art history. He went on to study Russian and Bohemian studies at Cambridge University’s Corpus Christi College (prof. Karel Brušák), where he did his exams in Czech literature, Russian and an interdisciplinary field combining art history and literature related to the European avant-garde of 1914–1939 (1990 BA, 1993 MA).
After moving to Prague, in 1991–1992 he worked as a translator for Ateliér magazine. In 1992, he took a position as assistant curator at the Central Bohemian Gallery in Prague (after 1993 called the Czech Museum of Fine Arts, the predecessor to today’s GASK). From 1995, he was the curator of the gallery’s collection of graphics and drawings, from 2000 he was the curator of the sculpture collection and in 2008–2009 he held the position of expert assistant to the director. He left the gallery after a change in management.
In 2010–2012, Drury was assistant director for artistic activities and research and development at the Institute of Art and Design (today the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art) at University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, where he spent 2011–2013 as a lecturer on the subject of twentieth-century art history.
After a change in management at the Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region in Kutná Hora, he returned in 2013. The following year, he was made head of the gallery’s art department. Also that year, he and his colleagues from the art department came up with a new permanent exhibition titled States of Mind / Beyond the Image, whose innovative approach earned it the prestigious title of Museum Exhibition of the Year at the 2015 Gloria musaealis competition. An updated version of the exhibition, States of Mind / Beyond the Image – Interventions and Innovations (2017), includes contemporary interventions inspired by works from the collection. Richard Drury is curator of the gallery’s collection of paintings and graphics. His particular focus is on the artistic generation of the 1970s and on modern and contemporary graphics.