Living Legacy of W. McNeil Lowry

This carefully curated collection of the writings and speeches of W. McNeil (Mac) Lowry will provide significant information about and insight into a remarkable period in the second half of the twentieth century, when the foundations of the arts as they now exist in the United States were creatively and firmly laid, primarily through Lowry’s penetrating intellectual perspective and his strategic organizational acumen as Director of The Ford Foundation’s unique Program in Humanities and the Arts. And many of the fundamental issues he raised and analyzed—why the arts should be valued and how they are best supported and governed—are no less pressing today. The significance of the material is framed and underscored by a foreword by Darren Walker, President of The Ford Foundation; an enlightening essay on "W. McNeil Lowry, the Arts and American Society" by the eminent scholar, Stanley Katz; poetic and powerful tributes to Lowry by Lincoln Kirstein and Peter Zeisler; and a context-setting introduction by the editor. Given the substantive variety and depth of the chapters, the volume will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students, artists and administrators, both within and at the intersection of philanthropy, the arts, society, public policy and history.

Frank Kessel is Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico. His previous affiliations include the Social Science Research Council in New York, the Bernard van Leer Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, and the University of Houston. Kessel’s Ph.D. is from the University of Minnesota and his M.A. from the University of Cape Town. His commitment to facilitating conversations across international and disciplinary boundaries—including between the social sciences and the humanities, and between research and policy/practice—is reflected in the many conferences and symposia he has organized and volumes he has edited. Kessel is an elected Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development.