A Yorkshire town is looking toward underappreciated sculptor Barbara Hepworth to help save the city. The Yorkshire Post looks at the planning behind the Hepworth Wakefield:
The Hepworth is not just about art and culture. The building sits within the Waterfront Wakefield development, and is a key part of the future regeneration of the city. Wakefield Council is a major funder of the £35m development, with other substantial sums coming from the Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England.
“Culture is one of the key ways in which you can change a city’s identity both for people within the city and the perception of people from the outside,” says Wallis.”If a city can insert itself into the international cultural economy, it has enormous benefits.”
It might sound a little ambitious – Rome, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Wakefield – but if you examine the picture, it becomes surprisingly attainable.
Barbara Hepworth, like that sculptor son of Yorkshire Henry Moore, spent much of her adult life living away from the county of her birth. But Yorkshire is indelibly printed on all her work.
While not as celebrated as her spiritual and artistic brother Moore, in no small part due to gender politics, the new building will redress that imbalance.
Already the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds attracts international audiences, who come to study at the centre’s library and to see genuinely world-class exhibitions.
Hepworth’s Work Is Coming Home to Put City Firmly on the Cultural Map (Yorkshire Post)
