The Henry Moore Institute in Leeds is reopening on 12 July after a revamp marking its 30th birthday as a global hub for sculpture.
Not a museum or gallery as such, but a centre for the study of international sculpture in the city where the great British artist Henry Moore began his training, the Institute celebrated its three-decade birthday in 2023, coinciding with hitting a milestone 1 million visitors over that time.
Like all sensible 30 year olds, the organisation decided this was the time to properly future-proof their physical infrastructure. They closed their doors for a number of months to fix and improve their Grade II listed home.
Now reopening — glow-up complete — they’ll also mark this moment with the very first European solo exhibition by Hany Armanious, one of Australia’s leading sculptors. It’s all part of the Institute’s renewed remit to champion sculpture as a medium and its developments from all over the planet.
So to find out Moore (apols) here I interview Laurence Sillars, Head of the Henry Moore Institute. He’s led the organisation since 2017. We chat about what’s new for visitors, how they programme their exhibitions, and crucially, what his view is on the financial resilience of cultural organisations.
Hi Laurence. Excitingly, you’re about to reopen. So what’s new?
The Institute feels different from the moment you enter, with a completely new welcome area.
Our work with schools and young people through our Engagement Programme has grown enormously in recent years and the biggest change is a new, beautiful and light-filled studio for those visitors — suitable for messy making as much as talking.
Our research library has a new entrance lobby, our seminar room has been completely refreshed and, while perhaps less exciting, new toilets throughout the building and the removal of 30 years of filler and the refinishing of our gallery walls all add up to make this a very significant step-change in our offer.
What visitors might not notice is the work that has happened behind the scenes to enhance our sustainability efforts. We have installed solar panels on the roof and have been committed to using environmentally friendly materials and practices throughout from repurposing parts of the building to new staff uniforms.
Tell me about the opening exhibition — what will visitors see and learn?
Hany Armanious: Stone Soup is the first major exhibition in Europe of the Australian sculptor. It will span his entire career and include around 30 works.
Armanious moved to Australia from Egypt as a child and has spoken of needing to relearn the world through its material language as much as its spoken one. He makes near-perfect replicas of found objects through a delightfully precarious casting process using pigmented resin.
His work unravels any certainty of truly knowing the world through its things, but also reflects upon the joys of encountering objects for the very first time — all those responses to form and touch that rattle through your subconscious. Chunks of pavement, discarded noticeboards, collections of burnt-out candles, sections of decorative fencing are all fair game subject-wise, rekindled almost as paintings in their new guise. Once you tune into his way of looking, you never quite experience the world in the same way again.
How do you programme exhibitions? What do you consider?
Often working with guests scholars, we facilitate new research and are excited by the lenses it can provide to look afresh at narratives that have been previously overlooked.
We’ve just started a multi-year research project called Beyond the Visual that aims to enhance blind people’s experience of art in museums. It will culminate in 2025 with the first major UK exhibition showcasing sculpture predominantly made by blind or partially blind artists and is rare in having a blind curator as intrinsic to the project.
In 2022 we presented The Colour of Anxiety: Race, Sexuality and Disorder in Victorian Sculpture which linked the introduction of colour and new materials in sculpture to a sense of anxiety in Victorian society due to social change and scientific advances.
Similarly we want to present the best of sculpture being made today that hasn’t yet had widespread exposure. Our recent exhibition with South African artist Lungiswa Gqunta and that with Armanious sit in that strand.
The Henry Moore Institute is not strictly a museum — how do you describe yourself, and what is your mission?
At our heart we are a research centre and see it as our mission to bring a 360 degree appreciation of sculpture — be it through research, display or making — to as wide an audience as possible.
As well as a temporary exhibitions programme we have lectures, talks and conferences throughout the year (the majority of which are accessible online), a research library of 30,000+ books which grows daily, an Archive of Sculptors’ Papers which represents the working lives of hundreds of British sculptors through their notebooks, sketchbooks and a wealth of other ephemera, even materials, tools and artist’s book collections.
We also host visiting research fellowships for artists and scholars throughout the year. That’s all complemented by an engagement programme that enriches the visits of young people to the Institute and has relationships with schools, colleges and groups throughout the city and beyond.
The long-established partnership of Leeds City Council and the Henry Moore Foundation — of which the Institute is part — began with the development of the Sculpture Study Centre in Leeds Art Gallery in1982 and led to the development of the Institute in 1993. It represents an unparalleled collaboration in the collection, study and presentation of sculpture. The City Council’s sculpture collection is housed at Leeds Art Gallery and encompasses finished sculptures, maquettes, models and works on paper. It lies at the heart of our work together and is complemented by the curatorial and research expertise of the Institute.
Together we grow knowledge and understanding of works in the collection, curate displays, oversee collection growth and integrate these activities with the Archive of Sculptors’ Papers, the Sculpture Research Library and the Institute’s ongoing research programme.
As part of our reopening we’re launching a gallery dedicated to displays drawn from the Archive. Across the two sites we’re also presenting a number of new acquisitions that we’ve brought about collaboratively including work by Emii Alrai, Phyllida Barlow, Hew Locke and Ro Robertson. Some very exciting new acquisitions are also about to be announced!
A recent Art Fund report revealed that two-thirds of museum directors are concerned about funding shortfalls, up from half in 2022. Do you share this worry for your venue?
Everyone is feeling the impact of shortfalls and rising costs. Museums are well versed at maximising budgets and we’re no exception in thinking strategically and with great care when using our resources to have the greatest impact. Collaboration has been key, and sharing resources wherever possible, like our ongoing partnership with Leeds Art Gallery and within Yorkshire Sculpture International (a collaborative venture across the specialist sculpture venues in the county.)
We’re also aware of how especially difficult it is to survive as an artist right now, perhaps more than we’ve known for decades. We’re thinking hard about different ways to provide support and opportunity where it’s needed most from fellowships and residences to mentorships.
July 2024 sees a general election in the UK. What would you urge the next government to do to best improve the UK’s cultural ecosystem, including for venues like the Henry Moore Institute?
We need art and all creative subjects firmly back in the curriculum so they are prioritised at the earliest age. The benefits of these subjects to the mind, body — and economy — are so thoroughly proven it just needs to be fixed.
While capital investment is always good, there needs to be a complete rethink about revenue funding. We are blessed with amazing venues and collections in nearly every city, but we’re struggling like never before to maintain them, let alone grow them, largely without any significant increase in public funding for decades. But we can go so much further. For example artists are supported in many better ways in many other countries. I could go on…
Finally, what are your other tips for people to get a culture fix in Leeds?
It’s such a rich city for a culture hit. For sculpture lovers, beyond the Institute there’s Leeds Art Gallery and the nearby Hepworth Wakefield and Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Away from sculpture there’s Phoenix Dance, Northern Stage, Northern Ballet, Opera North, The Leeds International Piano Competition and so many other venues and organisations doing ground-breaking things.
Or, just mooching about the city’s Victorian arcades is always uplifting, as is a visit to Kirkgate Market: it opened in 1822, is home to some 250 stalls and is one of the largest indoor markets in Europe.
