W.

McNeil Lowry Is Dead; Patron of the Arts Was 80

nytimes.com/1993/06/07/obituaries/w-mcneil-lowry-is-dead-patron-of-the-arts-was-80.html

Jack Anderson June 7, 1993

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June 7, 1993, Section D, Page 8Buy Reprints
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W. McNeil Lowry, a former vice president of the Ford Foundation who
made that institution a major supporter of the arts, died yesterday at his
home in Manhattan. He was 80.

The cause was cancer of the esophagus, said his wife, Elsa.

Through his efforts, Mr. Lowry (whose full name was Wilson McNeil
Lowry) helped make the Ford Foundation America's largest
nongovernmental arts patron and the first foundation to support dance.
The effects of his cultural campaigning were so great that Lincoln
Kirstein, a co-founder of the New York City Ballet, called him "the single
most influential patron of the performing arts that the American Credit...The New York Times Archives
democratic system has produced."
Mr. Lowry joined the Ford Foundation in 1953 to head its education program. He became the director of its arts and
humanities programs in 1957 and vice president in 1964. After retiring from the foundation in 1974, he was in demand as an
arts consultant, and from 1988 to 1991 he was president of the board of the San Francisco Ballet. Although Mr. Lowry, who was
familiarly known as Mac, could seem mildly professorial in manner, he proved to be tough-minded and strong-willed. Modest
Grants, Then Expansion

Under his guidance, the Ford Foundation began to support the arts in a modest way. Yet many of its early grants were
important. A grant of $105,000 in 1957 enabled the New York City Opera to present a season of American operas, and another
of $210,000 that same year to symphony orchestras across the country went toward the commissioning of 18 new symphonic
compositions.

The foundation expanded its arts program in 1962 with grants totaling $6.1 million to nine nonprofit repertory theaters. Later
grants went to writers, film makers, art schools and conservatories of music. In 1967 a Ford grant helped establish the Negro
Ensemble Company.

In 1963, believing that dance was an underfinanced art, Mr. Lowry spearheaded a project through which more than $7.7
million was shared by eight ballet organizations: the New York City Ballet, its affiliated School of American Ballet, the National
Ballet in Washington, the San Francisco Ballet, the Pennsylvania Ballet, the Utah Ballet (now Ballet West), the Houston Ballet
and the Boston Ballet.

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No foundation had ever supported dance on such a scale. Yet far from inspiring elation, the grants were greeted in some
quarters with dismay. Supporters of modern dance complained that their idiom had been ignored. From within ballet itself
came a second charge: that the leaders of the regional ballet groups had been connected at some point with either the City
Ballet or with its principal choreographer, George Balanchine, when he was associated with other troupes.

Although debates raged over the foundation's choices, Mr. Lowry's subsequent policy decisions helped make up for any lapses
of 1963. Modern dance eventually received Ford Foundation support; so did companies including American Ballet Theater and
the Joffrey Ballet. Moreover, the precedent of the Ford grants inspired corporations and other foundations to aid dance in their
own way. Roots in the Midwest
Mr. Lowry took criticisms seriously, if philosophically. Typically, in 1973, he said: "There is no way to be in this post without
getting both plaudits and criticism, sometimes intemperate and inaccurate. I don't mind being put under the villains. I can look
at myself in the mirror and see a villain."

No matter what the artistic field, Mr. Lowry encouraged activities across the nation. He explained why in a 1962 interview in
The New York Times: "I suppose the fact that I was born 80 miles from the exact geographical center of the United States has
given the foundation's program a grass-roots approach."

The place to which he referred was Columbus, Kan., where Mr. Lowry was born on Feb. 17, 1913. He received his bachelor's
degree in 1934 and his Ph.D. in 1941 from the University of Illinois, where he taught English from 1936 to 1942. In 1936 he
married Elsa Alberta Koch.

During World War II, Mr. Lowry served on active duty as a lieutenant in the United States Naval Reserve and as a writer for the
Office of War Information. He then embarked on a journalistic career. He was editor of The Dayton (Ohio) Daily News in 1946
and 1947; chief of the Washington bureau of the Cox Newspapers from 1947 to 1952, and associate director of the International
Press Institute in Zurich in 1952 and 1953. Before his wartime service, Mr. Lowry edited Accent, a literary journal, from 1940 to
1942, and over the years he contributed to publications including The New York Times Book Review, The Reporter, The
Progressive, Antioch Review and Educational Theater Journal, among others. Encouraging Collaboration

After leaving the Ford Foundation, Mr. Lowry helped organize conferences for the American Assembly, which had been
established at Columbia University in 1950 as a public-affairs forum. He edited "The Performing Arts and American Society," a
background volume for the American Assembly of 1978, and wrote "The Arts and Public Policy in the United States" under the
assembly's auspices in 1981. In 1975 he directed a study of the arts in America for the American Council of Learned Societies.

During his earlier years at the Ford Foundation, Mr. Lowry urged arts organizations to develop strong boards of directors, but
he became increasingly dismayed by the way boards began to usurp the prerogatives of artistic leaders. One reason he agreed
to head the San Francisco Ballet's board was to demonstrate how a company's artistic and managerial staffs could work
together harmoniously.

Mr. Lowry was given a special Tony Award in 1963 for his support of American theater. Other honors include an ANTA Award,
the Sigma Delta Chi Award, the Association of American Dance Companies Award, the Capezio Award, the American
Association of University Presses Award and the John F. Wharton Theater Award.
He is survived by his wife and a son, Harrison Graham Lowry of Purcilville, Va.