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 the director of the Henry Moore Foundation and administrator of the estate of Barbara Hepworth, encouraging the study and exhibition of sculpture in the county of their birth through his creation of the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds and his advice and support for the development of The Hepworth Wakefield.