All about

BATES LOWRY

Group 1 Alcantara
Batang
Bello
Tugade
 Biography

• Bates Lowry was an art historian who was a director of the Museum
of Modern Art and founding director of the National Building Museum.
 Biography
• He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio received an undergraduate
degree from the University of Chicago. He was in the United
States Army during World War II. He returned to the
University of Chicago after the war and earned a masters and
Phd.

• Lowry died in Brooklyn, New York while visiting his

daughter. He had been living in Boston at the time.
 Career
• He had teaching stints at the University of
Chicago, University of California, Riverside,
New York University Institute of Fine Arts,
Pomona College, the University of
Massachusetts Boston, University of Delaware
and Brown University.
 Career
• In 1966, he was a founder of the
Committee to Rescue Italian Art to raise
funds for the protection of Italian art
endangered in Florence, Italy flooding. He
remained chairman until 1976.
 Career
• In 1968–69, he served a 10-month tenure as director the
Museum of Modern Art. David Rockefeller, chairman of the
museum, said he was dismissed because he had attempted to
take on the job of curator of the painting and sculpture at the
museum which caused strife in the department and because
he did a major renovation to his office without MoMA
board approval.
 Career
• In 1980, he became founding director of
the National Building Museum and oversaw
the establishment and renovation of its home
in the 1881 Pension Building. He remained
there until 1987.
 Publications

• 1961: The Visual Experience: An Introduction to Art, Prentice-

Hall Inc.
 Publications

• 1965: Renaissance Architecture, George Braziller Inc.

 Publications

• 1985: Building a National Image: Architectural Drawings for the

American Democracy
Publications

• 1912, National Building Museum

 Publications

• 1994: Looking for Leonardo: Naive and Folk Art Objects Found in
America, University of Iowa Press
 Publications

• 1998: The Silver Canvas: Daguerreotype Masterpieces from the J. Paul

Getty Museum, J. Paul Getty Trust Publications
 SEEING SUBJECT
• Our ability to see is similar to our ability to speak: "We are not born
with the knowledge of how to see, any more than we are born with
a knowledge of how to speak in English. We are born only with the
ability to learn how."

• Provided we have the psychological ability, we can all look;

however, our ability to 'read' and 'see' (that is, to interpret) is
contingent. It is what our eyes have been socialised to see, and our
minds to interpret.