In April that year, he visited St Ives, Cornwall, where he met artists who had settled there, including; Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Peter Lanyon, and Patrick Heron.

Retrospectives he curated of contemporary artists for the Tate Gallery include; Ivon Hitchens (1963), Jean Dubuffet (1966), Peter Lanyon (1968), and William Scott (1972).

During this time he realised the expansion of Tate's Millbank site by creating the Clore Wing to display the work of J.M.W.

At a time when the Tate's public grant had been capped, Bowness established patrons’ groups to fund the purchase of historic and contemporary work.

The Turner Prize was established under Bowness's directorship in 1984 as an initiative to foster interest in contemporary British art.

[7] Bowness's publications include: Introduction, Four English Middle Generation Painters: Heron / Frost / Wynter / Hilton (Waddington Galleries, May 1959).

Victor Pasmore: with a catalogue raisonné of the paintings, constructions and graphics, 1926-1979 (Thames & Hudson, 1980), with Luigi Lambertini.

The Conditions of Success: How the Modern Artist Rises to Fame (Thames & Hudson, 1989), based on the Walter Neurath Memorial Lecture, 1989.

Poetry and Painting: Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Apollinaire, and their Painter Friends (Clarendon Press, 1994), based on the Zaharoff Lecture for 1991–2.

‘Ten Good Years’ in Generation Painting 1955–65: British Art from the Collection of Sir Alan Bowness (The Heong Gallery at Downing College, Cambridge, 2016).