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Henry Moore Studios & Gardens is currently closed for winter, reopening in April 2025.

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2015

An open, round silver container holds a smaller roll of white film.

Christine Kozlov: Information

10 December 2015 – 21 February 2016
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Drawing from Kozlov’s to date unexamined archive, this exhibition explores how sculpture became redefined during the conceptual art movement, when idea came to take precedence over object.

A wood frame affixed with leather strips, with the outline of a yellow hand painted on top.

Paul Neagu: Palpable Sculpture

13 August – 8 November 2015
Main Galleries and the Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

This exhibition celebrates multi-sensory encounters with sculpture, presenting over 120 works by Neagu including sculptures, drawings, films, texts and archival material, much of which has never previously been exhibited.

Carol Bove / Carlo Scarpa

2 April – 12 July 2015
Main Galleries

Bringing together contemporary sculptures by American artist Carol Bove (b. 1971) with exhibition furniture, sculptures and architectural prototypes by Venetian architect and exhibition designer Carlo Scarpa (1906-78).

Black and white photograph of numerous steel pipes and grid covers, piled together on a concrete floor.

Garth Evans: Sculpture Photographs

2 April – 12 July 2015
Sculpture Study Galleries

Garth Evans (b. 1934) is central to the narrative of British sculpture, his work experimenting with the possibilities of medium, form, weight and scale.

A red spiny lobster carved in wood. The legs are tucked up by the body, making the main part roughly egg shaped, while the antenna curve out in front of the body and then back over the top, roughly doubling the height of the sculpture.

A Study of Modern Japanese Sculpture

28 January – 19 April 2015
Gallery 4

Nine sculptures from the Taisho and early Showa periods (1912-41), bringing work from this period in Japan to British audiences for the first time.

2014

Black and white photograph of Dorothy Annan crouching down to work on the mosaic panels for King's College Library, Newcastle.

Dorothy Annan and Trevor Tennant

11 November 2014 – 1 March 2015
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Taking a newly acquired archival collection, this exhibition sheds light on the relationship between sculpture and architecture and the role of art in British society following the Second World War in Britain.

Abstract sculpture made from thin, interlocking sheets of aluminium. Some are joined with hinges. Two of the sheets have a circular cut-out at the centre, with the resulting circles of aluminium laid on top of each other, set at roughly 90 degrees to the sheets they were cut from, creating the impression of a sphere at the centre of the sculpture.

Lygia Clark: Organic Planes

24 September 2014 – 4 January 2015
Gallery 4

Brazilian artist Lygia Clark’s (1920-88) experiential sculpture sought to break the space between artwork and perception, radically innovating the relationship between the art object and the audience.

Several people walk around an installation made of interlocking pieces of wire configured into polygonal structures.

Gego. Line as Object

24 July – 19 October 2014
Main Galleries and the Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Gego. Line as Object investigates the Venezuelan artist’s unrivalled engagement with the problems of form and space – using light, shadow, scale and gravity in a constant process of discovery.

A display case holding two different editions of D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form, as well as intricate glass models of Jellyfish.

D’Arcy Thompson’s On Growth and Form

14 May – 17 August 2014
Gallery 4

A poetic and mathematical study of scale, gravity, order and process, On Growth and Form lodged itself within the consciousness of twentieth-century sculpture.

Black and white photo showing the sculptor in work clothes standing behind his sculpture of a mermaid; she is reclining on a turtle, and holds a fish by her neck, with two more by her feet. In front of the sculpture, a naked female model lies on a couch in a similar pose to the sculpture. The sculpture looks to be finished, so the photo is likely staged, rather than a candid work in progress.

Photographing Sculpture: How the Image Moves the Object

20 March – 22 June 2014
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Photography has made sculpture mobile since the birth of the medium, whether activating them visually, transporting them by proxy or documenting their travels across space and time.

Several minimalist sculptures situated in a double-height gallery space.

Ian Kiaer: Tooth House

20 March – 22 June 2014
Main Galleries

Ian Kiaer (b. 1971) repurposes debris to create props and proposals for perceiving objects in space, asking questions of value and form.

A black and white photo of a gallery space, with several minimal geometric sculptures constructed from lengths of painted wood, steel, and wire.

Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg: Construction for a Spatial Structure VI (‘KPS6’, 1919/73)

22 January – 20 April 2014
Gallery 4

Vladimir (1899-1982) and Georgii (1900-33) Stenberg are central figures of the early Russian Constructivist movement, characterised by a laboratory style of working that placed the ‘artist-producer’ within everyday activities.

2013

Drawing of a 'Floating Fire Machine'; a barge with an elaborate system of pulleys and gears, designed to shoot fireworks. Text on the side of the barge reads: 'All parts of machine are bandaged with rags & petrol. The whole machine is on fire. Flywheels, axles. Fire starts from one end. Large, moving banks of fireworks, explosions, coloured flames. Centre tower dances 'bandaleros' of fireworks in the flames. c. One hour performance MACHINE.'

Stephen Cripps: Pyrotechnic Sculptor

21 November 2013 – 16 February 2014
Sculpture Study Galleries

Cripps transformed objects with actions, sound and pyrotechnics. In his short career from 1970-82 he developed many ambitious schemes for mechanical sculptures and performance works.

A black, person-sized sculpture stands on the floor of a gallery. A curved armature is in the process of spinning; the central point faces the viewer, so the movement takes the appearance of a spiral. A red foot operated button sits on the floor nearby, to turn the sculpture on or off.

Jean Tinguely: ‘Spiral’ (1965)

25 September 2013 – 5 January 2014
Gallery 4

Swiss artist Jean Tinguely’s (1925-91) experiments with mechanical contraptions explore how animated objects can initiate sculptural events.

Three sculptures of the head and shoulders of a young girl. On the left and to the front is a plaster model; in the centre is the larger marble sculpture, roughly twice the size of the plaster version; and at the other end, facing away, is a version of the same sculpture in bronze, slightly smaller smaller than the model in plaster.

The Age of Innocence: Replicating the Ideal Portrait in the New Sculpture Movement

25 July – 20 October 2013
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Examining notions of the ‘ideal’ in female portraits and head studies of the New Sculpture Movement, a group of late nineteenth-century artists whose emphasis on realism, emotion and sensuality signalled an important change in British sculpture.

Alberto Giacometti: ‘Tête de femme (Flora Mayo)’ (c. 1927)

15 May – 18 August 2013
Gallery 4

This focused exhibition shows Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture ‘Tête de femme (Flora Mayo)’ (c. 1927) alongside his drawing ‘Corner of the Studio with ‘Self-Portrait’ from 1925 in Plaster’ (c. 1927).

Keir Smith: From Wall to Floor

21 March – 23 June 2013
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Keir Smith: From Wall to Floor focuses on the artist’s work made in the 1970s and early 80s, a time when he made the transition from figurative painting into sculpture, experimenting first with process-based art and performance before moving into a landscape setting.

Several thousand dice in yellow, blue, red, black and white, each with only a single dot on each face, lie mixed together on a grey floor.

Robert Filliou: The Institute of Endless Possibilities

21 March – 23 June 2013
Main Galleries

The first solo exhibition devoted to Filliou (1926-87) in the UK considers the French artist’s work outside of his close ties to Fluxus in order to focus specifically on his sculptural output, and asks the question: when does an everyday object become a sculpture?

Vladimir Markov: Displays and Fictions

30 January – 28 April 2013
Gallery 4

Vladimir Markov (1877-1914), a Latvian painter and art theorist fascinated by the display and understanding of art, scoured galleries across Europe to photograph ethnographic collections of sculpture.

2012

1913: The Shape of Time

22 November 2012 – 17 February 2013
Main Galleries

1913 was an extraordinary year in the histories of modern European art, seeing artists explore increasingly experimental ways of representing the complex life of the modern world.

A back bicycle wheel, without a tyre, has been turned upside-down and attached the the top of a white wooden stool.

Sturtevant: ‘Duchamp Bicycle Wheel’ (1969-1973)

26 September 2012 – 13 January 2013
Gallery 4

This focused exhibition features a single work by Sturtevant made between 1969 and 1973: ‘Duchamp Bicycle Wheel’.

Helen Chadwick: ‘Wreaths to Pleasure’

8 September 2012 – 17 February 2013
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Helen Chadwick’s innovative series of photographic ‘wreaths’ reveal a hidden world of visual and sensorial pleasures.

Sarah Lucas: Ordinary Things

18 July – 21 October 2012
Main Galleries

Ordinary Things takes Sarah Lucas’ recent series of sculptures ‘NUDS’ (2009-) as a starting point, looking forward and backward across an artistic practice that has engaged with the possibilities of sculpture for over two decades.

Vlassis Caniaris: ‘Composition’ (1974)

30 May – 2 September 2012
Gallery 4

Presenting a single sculptural work by Greek artist Vlassis Caniaris, ‘Composition’ from 1974, seen outside of Greece for the very first time.

Michael Dean: Government

12 April – 17 June 2012
Main Galleries

Michael Dean’s (b. Newcastle 1977) tactile concrete sculptures quote from and transform the Institute’s galleries.

John McCracken: ‘IV’ (1985) and ‘Neon’ (1989)

29 February – 13 May 2012
Gallery 4

John McCracken made blocks, slabs, planks and geometric shapes utilising the basic languages of sculpture: scale, colour, height, width and breadth. His sculptures ask a fundamental question: ‘how do things sit in space?’

2011

Nice Style: The World’s First Pose Band

14 December 2011 – 12 February 2012
Gallery 4

Presenting photographs, posters, postcards and archival material relating to ‘Nice Style’, a collaborative performance group set up in Maidstone in 1970 by British artists Bruce McLean, Paul Richards, Gary Chitty, Robin Fletcher and Ron Carr.

Shelagh Cluett: Drawing in Space

1 December 2011 – 11 March 2012
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

This exhibition of intricate sculptures and drawings by the influential sculptor, Shelagh Cluett, marks the recent acquisition of her archive by the Institute.

Tacita Dean: ‘Mario Merz’

6 September – 4 December 2011
Gallery 4

Tacita Dean’s work is concerned with the sculptural properties of light and space, which she explores through drawing, film and sound.

Mario Merz: What Is to Be Done?

27 July – 30 October 2011
Main Galleries

A leading figure of Arte Povera, Mario Merz’s approach to art making was driven by asking: what can an artist do in the face of a precarious future?

Darrell Viner: Early Work

27 July – 30 October 2011
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Darrell Viner (1947-2001) was a pioneer in the field of computer art. He originally turned to computers to pursue his interest in movement and animation and went on to apply the technology to kinetic and interactive sculpture.

Jean-Marc Bustamante: Dead Calm

21 April – 26 June 2011
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

This is the first major exhibition of Jean-Marc Bustamante’s work in the UK, bringing together two areas of his practice to explore the relationship between photography and sculpture.

Savage Messiah: The Creation of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

16 March – 31 July 2011
Gallery 4

This exhibition highlights the extraordinary ways in which the life of the French-born sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915) entered mainstream culture.

2010

A Rough Equivalent: Sculpture and Pottery in the Post-War Period

29 September 2010 – 2 January 2011
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

A Rough Equivalent brings together sculpture and ceramics from the 1950s to the 1970s from the major collections at Leeds and York Art Galleries.

Undone: Making and Unmaking in Contemporary Sculpture

29 September 2010 – 2 January 2011
Main Galleries

Undone presents work by contemporary artists who are interested in engaging with the materiality and process of making sculpture.

Alan Johnston: Drawing a Shadow: No Object

18 February – 1 May 2010
Main Galleries

Alan Johnston’s drawings both reflect and subtly reconfigure the architectural spaces they inhabit, highlighting the galleries as sculptural spaces in their own right.

2009

The Developing Process: The sculptor’s education in drawings and photography

9 October 2009 – 2 May 2010
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

The Developing Process explores the ways in which sculptors were taught to think three-dimensionally from the late nineteenth century through to the 1960s. 

Sculpture in Painting

8 October 2009 – 10 January 2010
Main Galleries

This exhibition explores the relationship between art in two and three dimensions, looking at the dialogue and interplay between painting and sculpture.

Subject/Sitter/Maker: Portraits from an eighteenth-century artistic circle

14 August – 14 November 2009
Gallery 4

Offering a unique opportunity to compare likenesses in two and three dimensions, this study exhibition focuses on five works which depict two of eighteenth-century London’s leading lights.

Art in Public Places: an archive of the Public Art Development Trust

29 May – 29 August 2009
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Established in 1983, the Public Art Development Trust (PADT) defined public art in the UK for twenty years. This exhibition celebrates the archive of the PADT, which was acquired by the Henry Moore Institute in 2005.

The New Monumentality

29 May – 29 August 2009
Main Galleries

Gerard Byrne, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Dorit Margreiter explore the attraction of modern post-war buildings for artists born in the heyday of monumental architecture, as typified by London’s Barbican Centre and the University of Leeds.

Concrete and Poetry: Drawings for an art museum by Lina Bo Bardi

3 April – 4 July 2009
Gallery 4

The first UK exhibition to explore the vision of the architect Lina Bo Bardi focuses on her drawings for the iconic Museum of Art in São Paolo (MASP), designed and built between 1957 and 1968.

Asta Gröting Sculpture: 1987-2008

8 February – 26 April 2009
Main Galleries

Selected by Gröting herself, this exhibition of both her early and latest works appear at first like mysterious props left scattered across a stage, as if they might have a role within a larger and unspecified narrative.

2008

Dalou in England: Portraits of Womanhood (1871-1879)

22 November 2008 – 22 February 2009
Gallery 4

Dalou, through his images of women, revealed and questioned the stratified nature of modern society and its strict demarcations between the classes.

Sculpture in the Home

1 October 2008 – 4 January 2009
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Re-staging a post-war initiative that endeavoured to make sculpture part of everyday life, displaying contemporary sculptures in gallery installations suggestive of modern domestic interiors.

Taking Shape: Finding sculpture in the decorative arts

30 September 2008 – 4 January 2009
Main Galleries

Taking Shape focuses on the inventive imagination of Baroque and Rococo that dominated sculpture and the decorative arts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and presents it in a new light.

Unfinished Business: Mark Wilsher

26 July – 26 October 2008
Gallery 4

This series of experimental ‘photo-drawings’, which modify and recontextualise abstract sculpture of the 1960s and 70s, is the culmination of Mark Wilsher’s Research Fellowship at the Henry Moore Institute.

The Object Quality of the Problem: on the Space of Palestine/Israel

31 May – 26 July 2008
Main Galleries

Responding to this very particular set of geo-political contexts and current affairs, this exhibition attempts to reconcile the two-dimensional nature of contemporary documentary art with the wider sculptural field.

Prospects and Interiors: Sculptors’ Drawings of Inner Space

30 May – 22 August 2008
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Based around a core of works in the Leeds collection, Prospects and Interiors addresses the sculptor’s concern to find a way of representing space as matter.

Heart of Darkness: Ivory carving and Belgian colonialism

4 April – 28 June 2008
Gallery 4

Taking its title from Joseph Conrad’s celebrated novel, this exhibition examines the revival of ivory sculpture within the context of the brutal colonial exploitation of the Congo by Léopold II, King of Belgium.

Against Nature: The hybrid forms of modern sculpture

7 February – 4 May 2008
Main Galleries

Sculpture has frequently been used as a medium of metamorphosis, its malleable materials allowing fantastic forms to become real as it mixes human, animal and vegetal components.

Silkscreen print of a hedgerow with four trees in front, trimmed into conical forms. The work has been printed in blue, green, and a shade of yellow/lime.

By Leafy Ways: Early works by Ivor Abrahams

7 February – 3 May 2008
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

In By Leafy Ways, artist Ivor Abrahams invites viewers into the strange world of the English suburban garden, in which ideas of nature and artifice are subtly opposed.

2007

Thomas Schütte: Fake/Function

22 September 2007 – 6 January 2008
Main Galleries

Even before he left the Art Academy in Düsseldorf, Thomas Schütte’s work was much in demand. This exhibition brings together the work he made in those early years of his career.

A series of wall- and shelf-mounted lamps, withing simple conical shades in red, yellow, shite, or black.

Indoors and Out: The Sculpture and Design of Bernard Schottlander

22 September 2007 – 6 January 2008
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

This retrospective on the work of multidisciplinary German artist Bernard Schottlander highlights the dialogue between his interior design skills and interest in outdoor sculpture.

kissingcousins: A fellowship project by Jane Simpson and Sarah Staton

29 June – 29 September 2007
Gallery 4

What happens when two artists are let loose in a museum store? Jane Simpson and Sarah Staton were invited to select works from the Leeds sculpture collections and curate them into an exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute.

Towards a New Laocoon

13 May – 11 August 2007
Main Galleries

This exhibition looks at the sculptural aspects of Laocoon through a British lens, focusing on how the sculpture group has been re-interpreted by artists over time.

Drawing on Sculpture: Graphic Interventions on the Photographic Surface

12 May – 11 August 2007
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Taking a fresh look at the relationship between sculpture and photography, and the subtle ways in which drawing allows artists to use the flexibility of a two-dimensional medium to define and describe sculpture.

Modelling Charlotte Perriand: A Project by Sadie Murdoch

3 March – 26 May 2007
Gallery 4

Artist Sadie Murdoch reinterprets the classic 1928 image of the Chaise Longue, asking questions about feminism, authorship and identity.

Figuring Space: Sculpture/Furniture from Mies to Moore

18 January – 31 March 2007
Main Galleries

Exploring the shared space of modern furniture and modern sculpture.

Creation Myths: Epstein’s ‘Flenite Relief’ of 1913 in focus

3 November 2007 – 11 February 2008
Gallery 4

Radical now, and even more so in the years before the First World War, Epstein’s ‘Flenite Relief’ shows the act of giving birth: a baby emerges from between the legs of a mother whose body is bent double.

2006

Experimental Photography from the Bauhaus Sculpture Workshop

16 December 2006 – 18 February 2007
Gallery 4

This exhibition explores how innovative photographic practice became central to the activity of the Bauhaus sculpture workshop in Weimar Germany.

Leeds (Partial View)

23 September – 16 December 2006
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

In a series of evocative photographs made during his fellowship at the Institute in 2005, Frederico Câmara presents us with a vision of Leeds that is both mysterious and surprising.

Imi Knoebel: Primary Structures 1966/2006

23 September – 16 December 2006
Main Galleries

Displaying early and recent works, this exhibition examines the links between painting and sculpture, demonstrating the constructed qualities of painting in its relation to installation.

Charlotte von Poehl: The Notepiece

25 August – 19 November 2006
Gallery 4

Drawing on the personal writings and diaries of artists Eva Hesse and Sol LeWitt, von Poehl has created an exhibition that reflects on their thoughts, engaging the viewer in a personal dialogue.

The New Man: Alfred Gilbert’s Heroic Nudes 1882-1895

11 June – 5 August 2006
Gallery 4

In contrast to current media stereotypes, this exhibition finds its place in the late Victorian period, when ‘new men’ were not the masculine icons of today but aesthetes and dandies.

Paper, Stone, Flesh and Blood: Transforming Views of Sculpture in French Revolutionary Prints

24 May – 26 August 2006
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

This exhibition shows how prints chart the shifting values of the French Revolution through sculpture, as France moved from absolute monarchy to revolutionary republic.

Antinous: the face of the Antique

24 May – 26 August 2006
Main Galleries

The first exhibition dedicated to Antique sculpture at the Institute explores the mythical image of Antinous, a beautiful youth and lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, who drowned mysteriously in the Nile before his 20th birthday.

Giorgio Sadotti: From Navels to Nipples Henry Moore

2 May – 3 June 2006
Gallery 4

Drawing from the Henry Moore Institute’s Research Library, Sadotti has created a book by systematically making circular holes in images. These disks, their radius dicated by the distance between the models’ navel and closest nipple, are displayed in this exhibition.

Freud’s Sculpture

22 February – 22 April 2006
Gallery 4

On the eve of the 150th anniversary of Sigmund Freud’s birth, the Henry Moore Institute in association with the Freud Museum presents a unique opportunity to explore Freud’s relationship with sculpture.

Shaping Modern Sculpture: Stephen Gilbert and Jocelyn Chewett in post-war Paris

5 February – 15 April 2006
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

A new angle on post-war constructivism and geometric abstraction with the first British exhibition of the work of Stephen Gilbert and Jocelyn Chewett.

Espaço Aberto / Espaço Fechado: Sites for sculpture in modern Brazil

5 February – 14 April 2006
Main Galleries

This exhibition reveals how fluctuations in political, social and economic stability in Brazil over the past fifty years have helped shape ideas about sculpture, as well as how sculpture represents those events.

2005

Thomas Woolner: Seeing Sculpture Through Photography

5 November 2005 – 5 February 2006
Gallery 4

Best known for his affiliation to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Woolner’s sculpture has been largely forgotten, but new research shows that in the field of photography Woolner deserves to be remembered.

New Acquisitions on Paper: Phyllidia Barlow, Sarah Staton and Cecile Johnson Soliz

14 September 2005 – 7 January 2006
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Though different in style and execution, these three contemporary British sculptors are bound by a common theme that places the sculptural subject in a space with an almost imaginary context.

Bronze: The Power of Life and Death

13 September 2005 – 7 January 2006
Main Galleries

Bringing to light the rich symbolic language of sculpture’s most familiar material. Though bronze may be seen as a traditional if not an old-fashioned material, it is still very much in evidence in contemporary work, often transformed in its appearance, but nevertheless present.

Jaki Irvine: Plans for Forgotten Works

2 July – 2 October 2005
Gallery 4

As a result of her Fellowship at the Henry Moore Institute, Jaki Irvine has created a series of haunting works through exploring some of the least expected areas of the Institute’s archive.

Shallow Space: Relief Sculpture from the Collection

7 May – 7 August 2005
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Shallow Space presents classic examples of relief sculpture alongside surrealist constructions and quirkier anomalies, such as reliefs made from nails, glove stretchers and the moving paper circles designed by Duchamp.

Ettore Spalletti

5 May – 7 August 2005
Main Galleries

Italian artist Ettore Spalletti produces work that lies between painting and sculpture, working on shaped grounds and supports with a loose and living surface of coloured pigment.

Medieval and Modern: Direct Carving in the Work of Gill and Barlach

4 March – 5 June 2005
Gallery 4

This focused study exhibition looks at the work of two artists – Eric Gill, in Britain, and Ernst Barlach, in Germany – who styled their work and their own personas into an image of medievalist tradition.

The Third Campaign: A Project by Neal White

8 January – 27 March 2005
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

In a conceptual campaign designed to re-ignite debate over Jacob Epstein’s sculptural scheme on the British Medical Association building in London’s Strand, White challenged the viewer to re-evaluate their response to public sculpture.

2004

Play/Ground: William Turnbull and the Horizontal Relief

5 November 2004 – 6 February 2005
Gallery 4

Play/Ground investigates the viewer’s relation to horizontal relief, allowing it to be considered not only as a sculptural form, but also as a game and playground to be explored.

Depth of Field: the place of relief in the time of Donatello

21 September 2004 – 27 March 2005
Main Galleries

Relief sculpture fascinates and perplexes, hovering between simple decoration and full-scale pictorial illusion. This exhibition examines the nature of relief at the beginning of the Renaissance period.

Mother Figure: Modernist Maternities from the Leeds Sculpture Collections

21 September – 5 December 2004
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

The mother and child motif in art is potent and enduring. It permeates most aspects of cultural history, maintaining a complex psychological bearing on our consciousness even today.

Carey Young: Disclaimer

2 July – 2 October 2004
Gallery 4

Investigating the increasing incorporation of the personal and public domains into the realm of the commercial, Young’s exhibition explores the connections between legal ‘disclaimers’ and notions of negative space.

Jacqueline Donachie: In the Arms of Strangers

8 May – 8 August 2004
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Jacqueline Donachie is a Scottish artist who works with drawing, photography, sculpture and installation.

My Personal Museum: ‘Ego Geometria Sum’ from the Helen Chadwick Archive

6 March – 5 June 2004
Gallery 4

This exhibition reveals the twists and turns of Chadwick’s imagination as well as latent meanings, which she never exposed or publicised in her lifetime.

2003

Making History: Edinburgh 1845

27 October 2003 – 9 February 2004
Gallery 4

Drawing on the Hill and Adamson collections of the National Galleries of Scotland, this exhibition examines an important symbol of Scottish national identity: the monument to Sir Walter Scott in Edinburgh.

Other Criteria: Sculpture in 20th Century Britain

26 September 2003 – 28 March 2004
Main Galleries

Taking stock of one hundred years of British sculpture, Other Criteria celebrates the diversity and ambition of art in this field.

Refashioning the Figure: The Sketchbooks of Archipenko

25 September 2003 – 4 January 2004
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Archipenko exemplifies the many-faceted nature of the European avant-garde. This exhibition asked to what extent should we understand him as an influence, and to what extent as a mirror, reflecting a community of ideas.

A Fine Tomorrow: Sculpture and Socialism in mid-century Britain

31 May – 31 August 2003
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Drawn from the collections of Leeds Museums & Galleries, this display tackles a range of work with left-wing affiliations, examining the connections between political and artistic tendencies.

Scultura Lingua Morta: Sculpture From Fascist Italy

29 May – 29 August 2003
Main Galleries

The ventennio fascista (1922-42) is a deeply complex phenomenon, combining progressive innovation with conservative historicism, left-wing inspiration with right-wing methodology.

Refashioning the Figure: Gaston Lachaise and ‘Elevation’

8 February – 4 May 2003
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Elevation was an ongoing theme in Lachaise’s work. Whether dancing, walking or reclining, the figures in his sculpture all seem to float, their feet hardly touching the ground.

Job Koelewijn: Try and See It Your Way

8 February – 4 May 2003
Main Galleries

Through a series of four installations, Koelewijn invites us to explore the space within and beyond our visual boundary, sensitising us to it, and focusing our looking in new ways.

Simon Periton: Flag

6 January – 16 March 2003
Gallery 4

Simon Periton makes doilies, cutting them laboriously by hand from layers of coloured paper to create complex visual and sculptural effects. Like the most shallow of reliefs, they hover precariously between two and three dimensions.

Draped and Undraped Life

8 February – 3 May 2003
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

This exhibition looks at how sculptors have articulated the human body – both with and without clothes – and features a variety of mythological and ‘everyday’ subjects. Clothing is used to both reveal and conceal the body, and to coordinate figurative sculpture’s meanings.

2002

Model Forms: Sculpture/Architecture in 50s and 60s Britain

1 October 2002 – 5 January 2003
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

This exhibition focuses on a period when the formal characteristics of sculpture and architecture often merged, and features works by designers with interests in both fields.

Wonder: Painted Sculpture from Medieval England

1 October 2002 – 5 January 2003
Main Galleries

Wonder is an exhibition that explores the combination of belief and disbelief that characterised the medieval understanding of sculpture. It presents polychrome sculpture in three forms of encounter: one of intimacy, one of monumentality, and one of perception.

Catching Some Air: Library Drawings by Bik Van der Pol

1 June – 1 September 2002
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Collecting, copying, reappropriating and transforming… Bik Van der Pol turned a Fellowship at the Institute’s Research Library into a years-long drawing exercise.

Christina Mackie: The Interzone

21 March – 25 May 2002
Gallery 4

Christina Mackie’s installation is a composite in which the manufactured world relays the natural world in different kinds of images and artefacts.

Shine: sculpture and surface in the 1920s and 30s

16 February – 12 May 2002
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

What does it mean for a sculpture to shine? This exhibition explores how a sculpture’s surface can communicate its maker’s intent and illustrate concepts of movement, music and value.

Second Skin: Historical Life Casting and Contemporary Culture

16 February – 12 May 2002
Main Galleries

Second Skin explores the connections between the process of life casting and figurative sculpture, and compares the differences in how casting was used by nineteenth-century sculptors and how it is used today.

2001

Bethan Huws: On What?

26 September – 30 November 2001
Gallery 4

Bethan Huws: On What? displays six texts in pencil on the walls of the gallery, exploring the complex relationships between language, thought, representation and art.

Jean Dubuffet: Maquettes for Monuments

25 September 2001 – 6 January 2002
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Designed as models to eventually be expanded into large-scale public projects, Jean Dubuffet’s maquettes emphasise the interconnection between art and life, and between the private and public domains.

Close Encounters: the sculptor’s studio in the age of the camera

25 September 2001 – 6 January 2002
Main Galleries

Close Encounters looks at how photography articulated a changing notion of the studio and of sculptural endeavour, redefining the objects and environments of sculpture itself.

Taking Positions: Figurative Sculpture and the Third Reich

26 May – 26 August 2001
Main Galleries

Encompassing sculptors whose careers flourished during the Third Reich as well as those who effectively made their work in isolation, this exhibitions represents a cross-section of those who stayed in Germany and found a way to continuing practising art – even if sometimes in ‘inner exile’.

Eric Kennington: ‘The War God’ and other works

26 May – 26 August 2001
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

This exhibition looks at works made by Kennington during the inter-war period, a time preoccupied with fears and premonitions of war, often projected onto representations of male bodies or anxious images of masculinity.

Siobhan Liddell: Curious About Existence

30 March – 26 May 2001
Gallery 4

In the first of a series of contemporary artists’ projects, Siobhan Liddell has made new ‘drawings’ especially for Gallery 4.

Le Corbusier: The Sculptural Collaboration With Savina

3 February – 29 April 2001
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

This exhibition takes ten polychrome works (1940-64) that focus on the arrangement of separate elements on or within a frame.

Wiebke Siem: Collection

3 February – 28 April 2001
Main Galleries

Bringing together Wiebke Siem’s four ‘Werkgruppen’ (workgroups) – costumes, accessories, wigs, masks, carts, stones, textiles and toys – this exhibition asks subversive questions about the possibilities of making art.

Homes for the Soul: Micro-architecture in Medieval and Contemporary Art

17 January – 18 March 2001
Gallery 4

Bringing together a selection of small-scale representations of architectural forms from the Middle Ages and the past twenty years.

2000

Chris Evans: Gemini Sculpture Park

27 September 2000 – 7 January 2001
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Gemini Sculpture Park refers simultaneously to several concerns: the power of branding, recognition of the business park, visualisation of corporate identity, and the possibility for sculpture to embody personal aspirations.

Return to Life: A New Look at the Portrait Bust

27 September 2000 – 7 January 2001
Main Galleries

Rather than trace the history of the portrait bust, this exhibition looks at how an outer form might mask more intimate inflections, setting up a dialogue between a portrait bust and its viewer, and a conversation between one portrait bust and another.

An isometric drawing: within a line-drawn cuboid, the area of space where the coast meets the sea is drawn, though the sea itself is deliberately omitted.

New Acquisitions: Works on Paper by Bethan Huws, Tania Kovats and Cornelia Parker

24 May – 26 August 2000
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

This exhibition focuses on recent work by female British sculptors acquired for the Leeds Sculpture Collections: watercolours by Bethan Huws, landscape drawings by Tania Kovats and photographs by Cornelia Parker.

Hounds in Leash: The Dog in 18th and 19th Century Sculpture

24 May – 26 August 2000
Main Galleries

British and French sculpture from the 1750s to the 1880s highlight the varied relationships between owners and their dogs, from pampered pets to the ferocious guardian of the underworld, Cerberus.

Belvedere

5 February – 29 April 2000
Main Galleries and Reception

An exhibition about architecture, and how it is represented outside of itself; about the house, and our relationship to it; about framing views within its architecture; about a seemingly endless circularity.

Eternal Return: Six Representations of Cycles of Time

19 January 2000 – 5 January 2001
Gallery 4

Eternal Return is an exhibition about sculpture and images of cyclical time. Over the course of the year 2000, six consecutive displays of single works present forms that represent particular aspects of cycles of time.

Dwelling Drawings by Etienne-Martin

5 February – 29 April 2000
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Etienne-Martin (1913-95) made his name in France as a maker of ‘dwelling-sculptures’: artworks with exteriors and interiors, which open and close, and which the viewer can enter inside. All these dwellings derive from the sculptor’s memory of his childhood home.

1999

Sculpture from the New Europe: Public Sculpture for the Two Germanies 1945-68

1 October 1999 – 16 January 2000
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Featuring work by Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Fritz Cremer, Bernhard Heiliger, Matschinsky-Denninghoff and Werner Stötzer.

Andrea Blum: Mobile Institution

8 August 1999 – 3 January 2000
Main Galleries and Reception

Andrea Blum’s ‘Mobile Institute’ reflects a period of change at the Institute as the galleries are being refurbished.

Claude Heath: Drawing from Sculpture

9 May – 30 August 1999
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Working blindfolded, Claude Heath spent two weeks making drawings from the Leeds Sculpture Collection, tracing objects with one hand whilst drawing his response to it with the other.

A Sense of Heaven: 16th Century Boxwood Carvings for Private Devotion

9 May – 26 June 1999
Gallery 4

A display of scented boxwood rosary beads, alongside a boxwood altar-piece and a silver pomander.

Katarzyna Kobro

25 March – 26 June 1999
Main galleries

Celebrating the centenary of her birth, Katarzyna Kobro is the first retrospective exhibition of the Constructivist artist’s work in the UK.

Survivals from a Sculptor’s Studio: Frederick Thrupp (1812-1951)

21 January – 28 February 1999
Gallery 4

Though his name is largely unfamiliar now, Thrupp left a legacy to the present day in the form of his studio collection – marbles, plaster models, clay maquettes and drawings amassed during the course of his life.

Graham Fagen: Subversive on the Side of Lunatic

10 May – 27 June 1999
Sculpture Research Library and Leeds Art Gallery

Graham Fagen placed similar objects in the public spaces of both galleries. Visitors could then use the accompanying book to lead them on a journey through the spaces, following the steps of the characters.

Survivals from a Sculptor’s Studio: Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973)

18 March – 29 April 1999
Gallery 4

Maquettes from the inter-war years show Lipchitz’s move out of cubism and into narrative subjects embodying the theme of struggle.

Making Their Mark: Artists’ Works on Paper from the Sculpture Collections

30 January – 25 April 1999
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

An exhibition of contemporary prints and drawings, which includes some recent acquisitions to the collection by artists such as Jonathan Callan, Adam Colton and Claude Heath.

1998

Rodin: Rhythm and Ritual

24 September 1998 – 3 January 1999
Gallery 4

Rodin’s drawings of the Royal Cambodian dancers capture every variation in movement, from relaxed poses and quiet, graceful gestures of the hands, to ecstatic, stamping dance steps.

Here and Now: Experiences in Sculpture

23 September 1998 – 28 February 1999
Main Galleries

An episodic exhibition, featuring seven overlapping single-person shows at the Henry Moore Institute and the Church of Saint Paulinus in Catterick. Featuring artists Alan Charlton, Paul Etienne Lincoln, Fred Sandback, Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir, Karl Torok, Richard Tuttle, and Jeff Wall.

Mapping, Space and Line

23 May – 16 August 1998
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

An exhibition of works from the Leeds Collections.

Work and the Image

29 January – 19 April 1998
Gallery 4, Sculpture Study Galleries and the Sculpture Research Library

Three linked displays explore the image of the worker amid the industrialisation of Britain, and the role of the artist as observer and outsider: Henry Moore’s sketchbooks of coalminers in Castleford; Ghisha Koenig’s work within the factories of post-war Britain; and Hamo Thornycroft’s The Mower.

Point and Line to Plane: Sculpture from the Leeds Collections

29 January – 19 April 1998
Main Galleries

Demonstrating different ways of ‘seeing’, this exhibition conveys the transition from sculptors’ notebooks – sculptures in line – through to works in iron, bronze and stone – drawings in space.

1997

The Space of the Page

23 September 1997 – 4 January 1998
Gallery 4

The Space of the Page examines books and other printed forms made by artists over the last thirty years, viewing them as art objects in their own right in contrast to typical associations with craft or bookbinding.

At One Remove

23 September 1997 – 4 January 1998
Main Galleries

The first contemporary group show at the Institute, At One Remove looks at how works with little material substance take the viewer outside themselves, into a space that is somehow other, elsewhere or at one remove.

Robert Morris: Recent Felt Pieces and Drawings

20 July – 23 August 1997
Main Galleries

Felt has long been a favourite material used by Morris to inform and question the realm of sculpture. His work explores the space reducing, physical presence of material, the spiritual and aesthetic adventure of creation, and the artistic exploitation of natural laws.

Work in Progress: Michael Kidner

21 May – 23 August 1997
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

This exhibition charts Michael Kidner’s ongoing experiments with colour and space, as something fluid and unframed. It features works on paper, constructions from the artist’s studio, and new works made in-situ.

Polymonochromes: David Batchelor

17 January – 6 April 1997
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Derived from the industrial colour chart rather than the artist’s colour circle, these not white-sculptures help put some intensity – and some colour – back into the genre of the monochrome.

Vanishing Point

11 September 1997 – 4 January 1998
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Prints and drawings from the collection of Leeds Museums & Galleries, demonstrating a shared interest in perspective.

1996

The Colour of Sculpture

12 December 1996 – 6 April 1997
Main Galleries

The Colour of Sculpture presents works in a wide range of materials: marble, metals, precious stones, glass and ivory, and shows how they were ‘painted’ to effect different tints and patinas.

David Nash: Line of Cut

4 September – 24 November 1996
Main Galleries and Gallery 4

Line of Cut focuses on David Nash’s interest in geometry and abstract form. A rigorous exercise of control underlies Nash’s sculpture, which is characterised by a tension between freedom and discipline, between nature and the artist.

Laurent Pariente

23 May – 3 August 1996
Main Galleries

Laurent Pariente is a young French artist who has achieved a unique synthesis of sculpture, architecture and painting. His work creates a gesamtkunstwerk of human experience to intrigue and engage the mind and the senses.

The Sculptures: Jasper Johns

17 April – 29 June 1996
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Exploring themes of illusion versus reality, Jasper Johns’s (b. 1930) bronze representations of beer cans, light bulbs and everyday objects, so carefully sculpted and painted that it is difficult to tell them from the originals, have been taken as the beginning of Pop Art.

On Sculpture and Time: Lauri Antilla, Jussi Heikkila, Markku Kivinen, and Marko Vuokola

17 January – 30 March 1996
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

We think about humanity in terms of time: our working day and our free time, our youth and old age. The works of these Finnish artists from three different generations reflect the conception of time and natural space in their home country.

1995

Gravity’s Angel

27 September – 30 December 1995
Main Galleries and Gallery 4

Weight and light, matter and mind: the title Gravity’s Angel is designed to fasten attention on the properties of sculpture, its physical condition and its mental aspiration.

Stephen Cox: Surfaces and Stones of Egypt

16 February – 5 May 1995
Main galleries

Stephen Cox’s practice is characterised by working amongst carvers in other traditions, as a way of getting physically and spiritually closer to the origins of our own aesthetic sensibilities.

arp : reliefs

7 June – 2 September 1995
Main Galleries

Spanning 50 years, this exhibition examines the wooden relief sculpture of Hans Arp (1886-1966) – from early coloured assemblages, through jokey motifs of lips and moustaches, to all-white constellations and late pieces in plain unpainted wood.

Jyrki Siukonen: Christmas Sauna

9 January – 28 January 1995
Gallery 4

Installation by Jyrki Siukonen, the Gregory Fellow in Sculpture, University of Leeds.

1994

A large, black, metal sculpture takes up most of the space in a white-walled gallery. It is formed from one long steel beam, coiled around tightly to form a vast cylinder. It is balanced on one of its open 'faces'. The sculpture has an appearance not unlike the spring in a clothes peg or mousetrap. It looks to be in the region of eight feet tall, with a diameter of around six feet. At the bottom of the sculpture, the beam sticks out from the end of the cylinder by a couple of feet; on the top edge, the beam continues much further, around 12 feet, and touches the wall opposite.

Serge Spitzer: Index 1972-92

29 March 1994 – 10 June 1994
Main Galleries and Reception

Over the past twenty years Serge Spitzer has devised a kind of sculptural language, building on a vocabulary revealed by the reductive practices of the previous generation of minimal and conceptual artists.

Medardo Rosso

13 July – 20 August 1994
Main Galleries

A South Bank Centre touring exhibition.

Rosso’s Contemporaries

13 July – 20 August 1994
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery

Presenting a selection of sculptural works from Italian artists working contemporaneously to Medardo Rosso (1858-1928), including Pietro Magni, Ettore Ferrari, Guiseppe Grandi and Vincenzo Gemito.

1993