Some achieve distinction in one or possibly two branches of the world of art, but few, if any, are outstanding in all of them. Alan Bowness – art historian, curator and museum director, critic and journalist, and a collector himself – was just such a man, for all his personal modesty and quiet public profile. What drove him was his love for, and thirst for knowledge of, 19th- and 20th-century art – painting and sculpture especially. This allowed him to become one of the most effective proselytisers for contemporary art, which in Alan’s heyday was very much a minority, and some would say elitist interest. (As an educator, he no doubt thought that every individual, with self-willed effort, might join in the pleasures that all the arts bring.)
Alan Bowness was an art historian whose eye and influence shaped the British contemporary art world over more than 40 years. He never sought the limelight, but his quiet self-assurance and belief in his own convictions inspired confidence in others and made him the most persuasive and effective voice in a talented post-war generation of curators, writers and critics.
In the late 1950s and through the 60s and 70s, he was a pioneering academic and a friend to a generation of abstract artists in England, whose work he championed in print and in the many committees on which he served. In the 80s he became a more public figure as the director of the Tate Gallery, where he made important acquisitions for the national collection, achieved a resolution of the long-running debate about how to honour J.M.W. Turner’s magnificent bequest to the nation and established a new northern outpost for the gallery in creating Tate Liverpool. In the 90s and beyond, he continued his patronage as
After being closed for four months,
museums in Germany will be able to open, subject to different restrictions depending on the number of coronavirus cases in each of the 16 states. Where cases are below 100 per 100,000 residents, the
Art Newspaper reports, museums will be able to open – in regions where the rate of cases is between 50 and 100 per 100,000 residents, visitors will be asked to book a time slot and supply their contact information. The decision makes German museums among the first venues to reopen in the country, with theatres, restaurants and indoor sports facilities having to wait until at least 22 March.
Obituary: Sir Alan Bowness, former Tate Gallery director yorkshirepost.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from yorkshirepost.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
For more than half a century, Alan Bowness was a leading public figure in the art world in Britain, predominantly as writer, lecturer, curator, administrator and philanthropist. He was the first trained art historian to become Director of the Tate Gallery, in London, where he made an invaluable and lasting contribution in the relatively short time that he held the post.
Bowness was born in London in 1928, educated at University College School, London, following which he did his National Service in the Friends’ Ambulance Unit. In 1950 he went up to Downing College, Cambridge, to read modern languages. From 1953 to 1955 he studied French painting under Anthony Blunt at the Courtauld Institute of Art. In 1957 he joined its staff, teaching 19th and 20th-century art. He became, successively, Reader, Professor and, finally, Deputy Director. In his 23 years at the Courtauld he taught a generation of students, many of whom later distinguished themselves in university or museum