ALAN BOWNESS, BORN 1928
ART CRITIC, CURATOR, AND DIRECTOR OF THE TATE
Sir Alan Bowness was a British art historian, art critic, and museum director. He was the director of the Tate Gallery between 1980 and 1988. 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. From 1953 to 1955, he was a postgraduate student at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, specialising in nineteenth-century French art. In 1957 Bowness began teaching at the Courtauld Institute of Art. He became a Reader in 1967 and a Professor in 1978. His popular book Modern European Art (1972) has been translated into French, German, Italian, and Korean.