Alan Bowness

Sir Alan Bowness CBE (11 January 1928 – 1 March 2021) was a British art historian, art critic, and museum director.

Leaving school at the end of the war, he worked with the Friends’ Ambulance Unit and the Friends’ Service Council in England, Germany and Lebanon from 1946 to 1950.

From 1950 to 1953, he studied Modern Languages at Downing College, Cambridge.

Bowness was active as an art critic in the late 1950s and early 1960s, writing for The Observer, Arts (New York), Art News and Review, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Burlington Magazine.

His collection of paintings by British artists, 1950–70 (Scott, Lanyon, Heron, Hilton, and others), is bequeathed to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and his art history library to Cambridge University Library.

Bowness died at his home in London on 1 March 2021, at age 93.

Bowness's publications include:

From 1953 to 1955, he was a postgraduate student at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, specialising in nineteenth-century French art.

He became a Regional Art Officer for the Arts Council in 1956, with responsibilities for the South West of England.

In April that year, he visited St Ives, Cornwall, where he met artists who had settled there, including; Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Peter Lanyon, and Patrick Heron.

In 1957, Bowness married Sarah Hepworth-Nicholson, daughter of Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson.

In 1957 Bowness began teaching at the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Introduction, Four English Middle Generation Painters: Heron / Frost / Wynter / Hilton (Waddington Galleries, May 1959).

During the 1960s, Bowness co-curated two major exhibitions of contemporary art at the Tate Gallery, London, 54:64 Painting and Sculpture of a Decade (1964) (with Lawrence Gowing) and Recent British Painting (1967) (with Norman Reid and Lilian Somerville).

During the 1960s and 1970s he also curated exhibitions for the Arts Council, including Vincent van Gogh (1968), Rodin (1970), French Symbolist Painters (1972), and Gustave Courbet (1978, with Michel Laclotte), as well as Post-Impressionism (Royal Academy, London and National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1979–80).

Between 1960 and 1970, Bowness published complete catalogues of the sculpture of Barbara Hepworth.

Catalogue of works in J.P. Hodin, Barbara Hepworth (Lund Humphries, 1961).

Retrospectives he curated of contemporary artists for the Tate Gallery include; Ivon Hitchens (1963), Jean Dubuffet (1966), Peter Lanyon (1968), and William Scott (1972).

William Scott: Paintings (Lund Humphries, 1964).

Henry Moore: Complete Sculpture, vol. 2 (Lund Humphries, revised edition, 1965) to vol. 6 (Lund Humphries, 1988).

He became a Reader in 1967 and a Professor in 1978.

Alan Davie (Lund Humphries, 1967).

Peter Lanyon (Tate Gallery, 1968).

His popular book Modern European Art (1972) has been translated into French, German, Italian, and Korean.

Following the artist’s death in 1975, Bowness ran the Hepworth Estate.

In accordance with Hepworth’s wishes, he oversaw the opening of her former house and studio in St Ives as the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden in 1976.

He was made a CBE in 1976 and knighted in 1988.

He was also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art, the Courtauld Institute of Art, and Downing College, Cambridge.

He was the director of the Tate Gallery between 1980 and 1988.

Bowness was born in Finchley to Kathleen (née Benton) and George Bowness, a school teacher.

He was educated at University College School in Hampstead.

Between 1980 and 1988 Bowness was Director of the Tate Gallery.

During this time he realised the expansion of Tate’s Millbank site by creating the Clore Wing to display the work of J.M.W. Turner, uniting the collection which had been divided between the British Museum and the Tate.

The Turner Prize was established under Bowness’s directorship in 1984 as an initiative to foster interest in contemporary British art.

After retiring from the Tate, Bowness became Director of the Henry Moore Foundation, setting up the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, Yorkshire.

He instigated the creation of Tate Liverpool, which opened in May 1988.

At a time when the Tate’s public grant had been capped, Bowness established patrons’ groups to fund the purchase of historic and contemporary work.

The Tate’s collection of post-war American and European art grew especially substantially during this time.

Bowness also began the preparations for the Tate St Ives (opened in 1993).

Since 2008 the Hepworth Estate has been run by his daughter, art historian Sophie Bowness.