Alan Bowness

This book comprises the selected writings of the eminent art historian, critic, and museum director, Sir Alan Bowness (1928-2021). In the 1950s and early 1960s, he was a regular and acute critic of contemporary art for Art News and Review, The Observer, The Spectator, Times Literary Review, and the New York-based magazine Arts, among others.

His reviews were often among the first substantial articles on the post-war generation of British artists, many of whom became his friends, and the first significant writings published in Britain on leading contemporary European and American artists. Many of these important but long out-of-print articles and essays are re-published here, as are others on the subject Bowness taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art from 1957 to 1980: nineteenth-century French painting.

Bowness left the Courtauld in 1980 to take up the post of director of the Tate Gallery. Under his leadership, the museum expanded its collection, deepened its commitment to scholarship, established itself as a major patron of contemporary art, not least through the Turner Prize, which he initiated, and embarked on an expansion programme that led to the opening of Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives, and a new wing of what is now Tate Britain.

His writings on museums (he also set up the Barbara Hepworth Museum in St Ives and was involved with The Hepworth, Wakefield) and his reflections on criticism and reputation, also published here, remain especially relevant for the present era of mega-museums and art hype.