UK Museums: The Hepworth Wakefield
The Hepworth Wakefield
Jake Davies
The Hepworth Wakefield is a major, new museum for modern art housed in a striking new building located on the waterfront of the River Calder.
It is named after the famous artist born in Wakefield, Barbara Hepworth, one of the most famous British sculptors of her generation.
Barbara Hepworth
Born in 1903 in Wakefield, Barbara Hepworth attended Leeds School of Art in 1920 and while there befriended Henry Moore.
Since then the two enjoyed a good-matured rivalry. In 1921 she went to the Royal Academy of Art until 1924.
Hepworth traveled extensively in Europe including studying marble carving in Italy. She married sculptor John Skeaping and together they were influential in bringing Modernist ideas back from Europe.
In 1929 she divorced Skeaping and moved in with painter Ben Nicholson, who she married in 1938. In 1939 they both moved to St. Ives in Cornwall.
Here they were influential members of what became known as the St. Ives School that arose among the British and foreign artists who settled there during World War II.
International Fame
In the 1950's and 60's her international reputation and the size of her works grew larger at the same time, as she moved away from stone and wood to work more in bronze and clay.
She remained in St. Ives until her death in 1975 at the age of 72 in a tragic fire in her studio. Her former home, garden, and studio in St. Ives is now a museum showing her work with her studio left exactly as it was at her death.
Exhibits
The Hepworth Wakefield opened in 2011 and was designed by architect David Chipperfield. It is a series of ten trapezoidal blocks.
Its Brutalist exterior has a fair number of local critics, but the building has won several prizes. The sloping roofs allow natural light into the upper galleries. There is a total of 17,000 square feet of gallery space as well as a small auditorium, studio, shop, and cafe overlooking the river.
The museum is home to a large collection of models and drawings donated by the Hepworth family, and some of her sculptures are also on display in the grounds.
The museum also holds the Wakefield City art collection which includes pieces by Ben Nicholson, Graham Sutherland, Paul Nash, Jacob Epstein, Anthony Caro, L.S. Lowry, and David Hockney.
In 2016 the museum's collection was expanded with a bequest from art collector Tim Sayer that included works by Bridget Riley, Alexander Calder, Gerhard Richter, David Hockney, and Henry Moore.
As well as the permanent collections, the museum also hosts temporary exhibitions.
Access - Getting There
Gallery Walk, Wakefield WF1 5AW
Tel: 01924 247360
Free entry
www:
hepworthwakefield.org
For opening times (and Covid restriction) see the website above.
The museum is located in the south of the city centre, the closest railway station is Wakefield Kirkgate. The gallery is on the FreeCityBus route which runs Monday to Friday from 10.08 am to 3.08 pm, and on Saturday from 8.30 am to 5 pm. The bus runs every 10 minutes and calls at Wakefield Westgate and Kirkgate train stations, Wakefield bus station, Ridings Shopping Centre and Trinity Walk.
Trains from King's Cross Station in London take less than two hours to Wakefield.
The nearest airports are Leeds-Bradford, Doncaster-Sheffield and Manchester International Airport.
A few miles away is the Yorkshire Sculpture Park that has many of Barbara Hepworth's larger works on permanent display.
Related
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
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