Alan Gowans was an art historian and university academic. A charismatic teacher and prolific author, his academic specialty was North American architecture, frequently highlighting such unheralded structures as gas stations, restaurants, motels, bungalows and mail-order homes, exploring their social, cultural and national significance. Perhaps his most influential work was Images of American Living. Gowans' place in the development of art history in America has been partly explored by Richard Kostelanetz. A former president of the Society of Architectural Historians

Society of Architectural Historians

The Society of Architectural Historians is an international not-for-profit organization that promotes the study and preservation of the built environment worldwide....

, he served as chairman of the art history department at the University of Delaware

University of Delaware

The university is organized into seven colleges:* College of Agriculture and Natural Resources* College of Arts and Sciences* Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics* College of Earth, Ocean and Environment* College of Education and Human Development...

 and as founding chairman of the Department of History in Art at the University of Victoria

University of Victoria

The University of Victoria, often referred to as UVic, is the second oldest public research university in British Columbia, Canada. It is a research intensive university located in Saanich and Oak Bay, about northeast of downtown Victoria. The University's annual enrollment is about 20,000 students...

 in Victoria

Victoria, British Columbia

Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of about 78,000 within the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, which has a population of 360,063, the 15th most populous Canadian...

, British Columbia

British Columbia

British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...

. From Victoria, he spearheaded an international and cross-cultural approach to the history of art, bringing notable scholars such as Siri Gunasinghe

Siri Gunasinghe

Siri Gunasinghe is a sanskritist, art historian, premier Sinhalese poet, novelist, literary critic and film maker.-Early life & Career:Siri Gunasinghe was born in Kegalle District of Sri Lanka...

 to the new university, and guest lecturers as varied as Immanuel Velikovsky

Immanuel Velikovsky

Immanuel Velikovsky was a Russian-born American independent scholar of Jewish origins, best known as the author of a number of controversial books reinterpreting the events of ancient history, in particular the US bestseller Worlds in Collision, published in 1950...

, Boris Piotrovsky

Boris Piotrovsky

Boris Borisovich Piotrovsky was a Soviet Russian academician, historian-orientalist and archaeologist who studied the ancient civilizations of Urartu, Scythia, and Nubia. He is best known as a key figure in the study of the Urartian civilization of the southern Caucasus...

 and Hans Wolfgang Müller. He settled in Washington D.C. in 1988 and continued to live a scholar's life until his death in 2001. He acted as a consultant for the Ken Burns

Ken Burns

Kenneth Lauren "Ken" Burns is an American director and producer of documentary films, known for his style of using archival footage and photographs...

/Lynn Novick

Lynn Novick

Lynn Novick is an American director and producer of documentary films known for mostly for her work with Ken Burns. Among her most notable collaborations with Burns are The War , Baseball: The Tenth Inning . and Prohibition . Their next project is a Vietnam War history planned for 2016...

 Film Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...

(1998).