Humanitas Chair in Museums, Galleries & Libraries University of Oxford, UK

In 2011 Ivorypress organised the first Humanitas Professorship in Museums, Galleries & Libraries at Magdalen College, University of Oxford, a professorship developed in close collaboration with and sponsored by Foster + Partners. The first Visiting Professor during this academic year 2010/11 was Glenn D. Lowry. The lecture, ‘Abodes of the muses: theorising the modern art museum’ took as its point of departure Alexander Dorner’s (the German scholar and director of the Landesmuseum in Hanover from 1925 to 1937) sense of the art museum as a place of discovery and learning, a space inherently educational yet also spiritual, dedicated to creating a life-long engagement with art, and especially contemporary art. ​

This lecture included contributions from Glenn D. Lowry, the photographer Thomas Struth; Neil MacGregor, director of The Brithish Museum; and Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain. As part of the C Photo Project, Ivorypress has been supporting different educational and academic initiatives for several years. The close relationship between Ivorypress and the University of Oxford through the Humanitas Chair of Contemporary Art offered students and attendees the possibility of coming into contact with outstanding academics and artists of our time. Lectures, workshops, debates, symposia were held every first week of May in Magdalen College and the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art.

Glenn D. Lowry (New York, USA, 1954) became the sixth director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1995. He leads a staff of 750 and oversees an active programme of exhibitions, acquisitions and publications.
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Ivorypress has published a record of the lecture given by Glenn D. Lowry. This publication is not for sale. Available upon request at: distribution@ivorypress.com

Organised by Ivorypress and sponsored by Foster + Partners