Adrian Stokes, Inside Out

A key voice in mid twentieth-century sculptural and architectural criticism, Stokes uniquely combined a disparate set of compelling concerns: modernist values of direct carving, speculative psychoanalytic thought, a sensitivity to the vitality of natural materials, and a deep understanding of pre-modern sculpture in its continual reanimation.

Taking as its starting point a re-engagement with Stokes’s writings about quattrocento relief, this season explores the generative potential of his distinctive critical metaphorics to address a wide range of sculptural phenomena.

Sculptural Values: Carving, Modelling, Making

Wednesday 30 September 2026
13:00–18:00
Early Career Research Symposium
Henry Moore Institute

This workshop brings scholars working on premodern sculpture together to re-assess Stokes’ primary distinction between ‘carving’ and ‘modelling’ as part of a larger discussion of sculptural values.

Stone-carving demonstration with Alan Micklethwaite 

Wednesday 21 October
14:00–17:00
Henry Moore Institute

Join us for this carving demonstration and hands-on lecture with renowned stone carver Alan Micklethwaite of Alan Micklethwaite Sculpture, Driffield, Yorkshire.

Stokes’s Objects

Friday 20 & Saturday 21 November 2026
Symposium
A major international conference
University of York

Inviting leading historians of Renaissance art, sculptural practice, and critical thought to engage with key objects of Stokes’s criticism, and especially with his career-long fascination with the sculptural practices of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy and its afterlives, from Agostino di Duccio’s carvings for the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini to the late work of Michelangelo and beyond, to Mickey Mouse and the Russian ballet. The event stages asynchronous dialogues between Stokes’s complex framings of specific sculptural artifacts and specialists who normally do not engage with Stokes, alongside other contributions addressing the many facets of his career.