Neil Bingham

University of Winnipeg alumnus Neil Bingham [BA(Hons) 77] is an author, historian, and critic on modern design and architectural drawings who has made a global impact in his field. 

Bingham, who is also a scholar and curator, has worked in some of the most important museums and galleries in the world, including the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the Royal Academy of Arts, London. He specialises in architectural collections. Presently he is an architectural curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and a teacher at New York University in London.

Bingham completed a PhD in Victorian architecture at the University of London under the supervision of the eminent architectural historians J. Mordaunt Crook and Sir Howard Colvin.

He then took up his first curatorial post in 1986 at the Royal Institute of British Architects Drawings Collection, arguably the greatest collection of its kind in the world. This was the start of his love affair with the architectural drawing that has led to major books on the subject, including 100 Years of Architectural Drawing: 1900 – 2000, and, after serving as architectural curator at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, Masterworks: Architecture at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Over his 30-year career, Bingham has also authored numerous books on different aspects of architecture and design. He is a model for Canadian architectural historians and for the Curatorial Practices students at UWinnipeg.

Although now London-based, Bingham still retains strong ties with home, with a house in Winnipeg, a cottage property at Beaconia overlooking Lake Winnipeg and, most important of all, many friends.

He delights in traveling through Manitoba where he continues to discover and enjoy local architecture, a result of his early professional years as an architectural historian for the Historic Resources Branch of the Province of Manitoba who commissioned his A Study of Church Buildings in Manitoba of the Congregational, Methodist, Presbyterian and United Churches of Canada.