Henry Moore Foundation 2026 programme

Beyond the Visual includes seven new commissions, plus historical and contemporary work, by sixteen international artists: Lucia Beijlsmit, Lenka Clayton, Fayen d’Evie, Barry Flanagan, Hillary Goidell, Emilie Louise Gossiaux, David Johnson, Jennifer Justice, Georgina Kleege, Aaron McPeake, Sam Metz, Serafina Min, Henry Moore, Bryan Phillips, Collin van Uchelen and Ken Wilder.

The exhibition marks the culmination of a pioneering three-year research partnership between Henry Moore Institute, University of the Arts London and Shape Arts funded by the AHRC. Consultations with blind and partially blind artists, academics and gallery visitors have informed new approaches to exhibition design, collaborative methods for producing audio resources and innovative ways of fostering sensory engagement in museums and galleries.

Incorporating touch, sound, smell and movement, the works are playful, poetic and often deeply thought-provoking. They challenge the dominance of sight in how we make and experience art, inviting visitors to encounter sculpture in ways that reach far beyond the visual.

Henry Moore Institute will present a major exhibition of new and recent work by Sagarika Sundaram, her first institutional solo show in Europe. Sundaram’s practice bridges material traditions and sculptural form, reimagining felt-making as an act of construction, layering and transformation. Working with wool, silk and dyes, she creates tactile, dimensional works that speak of the body and architecture.

Sundaram treats fibre as a sculptural medium that holds space, volume, surface and weight, each emphasised by her promiscuous use of colour. Her works are shaped through cutting, touch, pressure and the slow forming of matter, evoking both carving and moulding. She manipulates felted surfaces to reveal embedded pockets and hidden forms that lie beneath. These gestures of incision and revelation carry an energy of release, transforming surface into depth, containment into emergence.

Sundaram studied at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad before completing her MFA at Parsons School of Design, The New School, New York. Solo exhibitions include those at Alison Jacques, London and Nature Morte, Delhi (2025) and Palo Gallery, New York (2023). She has participated in group exhibitions at the Bronx Museum, New York (2024) and the Al Held Foundation & River Valley Arts Collective, Boiceville (2023).

For the first time, the renovated gallery will feature a dedicated exhibition covering the remarkable story of Henry Moore’s life and work, celebrating his status as one of Britain’s greatest sculptors and most internationally influential artists. This ever-changing presentation will tell the complete story of Moore’s life and career from 1922 to 1984 through sculptures from the Henry Moore Foundation’s peerless collection, including wood and stone carvings, bronzes and plasters. The artworks will be illuminated by reproduced materials from the Henry Moore Archive, with photographs, correspondence, diaries, videos and studio materials: bringing context to Moore’s oeuvre and exploring Moore’s deep engagement with nature, organic forms, and international influences, as well as his global impact.

A new extension to the barn provides state-of-the-art learning studios offering visitors the opportunity to learn, think, and make together. For the first time, working studio spaces will sit on the same site as Moore’s own, equipped with tools and resources to place making back at the heart of the site. Regular activities will include family play sessions, education programmes, workshops for all ages, community events, residencies and expert talks linking new research on Moore to contemporary issues.

Throughout summer 2026, Kew Gardens will welcome a once-in-a-generation presentation of artworks by Henry Moore, one of the most influential and internationally recognised artists of the 20^th century.

Curated as a partnership between the Henry Moore Foundation and Kew, Henry Moore: Monumental Nature represents the largest and most comprehensive showcase of Moore’s work to date, featuring 30 monumental works across the landscape and inside the iconic Temperate House, the largest surviving Victorian glasshouse in the world.

This major exhibition, the largest of its kind on Moore anywhere in the world, will offer a fresh perspective on Moore’s lifelong engagement with natural forms and materials, creating new opportunities for visitors to encounter his monumental sculptures within the context of Kew’s iconic vistas and historic glasshouses. Monumental Nature will also encompass a comprehensive exhibition in Kew’s Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art. This exhibition will feature over 90 works including bronzes, stone and wood carvings, prints and drawings, exploring Moore’s unique process of ‘thinking through nature’.