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Sculpture and Geology: Modernism, Interdisciplinarity and the Museum
Leicester Museum and Gallery, New Walk, Leicester, Leicestershire LE1 7EA
Monday 22 Apr 2024
7.30pmOpen to both members and non-members in person. Also streamed on Zoom.
Members free. Non-members £5 (student non-members £3)
See Tickets link below to book.
Organised by
Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society
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About this Event
Sculpture and Geology: Modernism, Interdisciplinarity and the Museum
Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society Joint Lecture with the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery
Professor Jenny Powell, Director and Barber Professor, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham
In 1930 a reviewer of an Arthur Tooth’s exhibition, that included work by Barbara Hepworth, commented that from the catalogue ‘it sounds at first glance like a geological and forestry exhibition’. Like many of her peers, including Henry Moore, Hepworth was very particular about her choice of stones that she used for carving. Some of these materials were increasing used in the built environment too. The Barber Institute of Fine Arts was constructed from Darley Dale stone in 1939, the same stone that Moore chose for his large-scale sculpture Three Standing Figures, 1947, first displayed in the open-air in Battersea Park a year later. This lecture will explore what a deeper exploration of the properties of stones in art and architecture can reveal about Hepworth and Moore’s practices. It also asks what interdisciplinary exhibitions can offer to the contemporary museum and its publics.
Jennifer Powell is Director of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, and Barber Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham’s Department of History of Art, Curating and Visual Studies. Prior to this, she was Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Royal Academy of Arts, London and Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge.
Professor Jenny Powell, Director and Barber Professor, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham
In 1930 a reviewer of an Arthur Tooth’s exhibition, that included work by Barbara Hepworth, commented that from the catalogue ‘it sounds at first glance like a geological and forestry exhibition’. Like many of her peers, including Henry Moore, Hepworth was very particular about her choice of stones that she used for carving. Some of these materials were increasing used in the built environment too. The Barber Institute of Fine Arts was constructed from Darley Dale stone in 1939, the same stone that Moore chose for his large-scale sculpture Three Standing Figures, 1947, first displayed in the open-air in Battersea Park a year later. This lecture will explore what a deeper exploration of the properties of stones in art and architecture can reveal about Hepworth and Moore’s practices. It also asks what interdisciplinary exhibitions can offer to the contemporary museum and its publics.
Jennifer Powell is Director of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, and Barber Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham’s Department of History of Art, Curating and Visual Studies. Prior to this, she was Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Royal Academy of Arts, London and Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge.
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