The Hepworth, Wakefield

[Gherkin]

A few photos from Saturday. I was told it was a lot quieter than the 17000+ people who visited on opening weekend. I'd recommend it to anyone local.

[CharlieP]

I'm definitely going to go the next time I have enough time to do it "properly".

[Gherkin]

I'm going to have to go back because my girlfriend was being a dick and we had to leave early, I didn't walk around the whole gallery. Allow 2 hours Charlie!

[CharlieP]

I had planned for four. Is that overkill?

[Gherkin]

It depends how interested in sculpture you are... I was more interested in the architecture but found myself chatting to a gallery assistant for just under an hour. I saw children running around the building in less than two minutes, if you're in a hurry this is possible.

[STOPGO]

Enjoyed a visit to The Hepworth this morning which was busy with all age groups. Split over two floors with the second floor containing most of the art work, and the ground floor being used for the reception,cafe,shop. As well as the Hepworth Gallery, there are special rooms for the St Ives connection, and one called Yorkshire in Pictures, which contains drawings and paintings of Chantry Chapel and bridge.

I think the location of The Hepworth as been well thought out and despite being close to the main road the setting is attractive and links well with the rest of Wakefield.

Parking wasn't a problem ether with a pay and display on the other side of the river from the Gallery. If full its possible to continue a little further down Thornes Lane till you get to a Sea Cadet Hut bear left at that and there's a small free car park within a couple of minutes of the gallery.

[STOPGO]

Nice to see The Hepworth being well supported by the general public, with 100,000 visitors already in the first five weeks. Here's the Y.E.P Link for Lazygamer.

http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.u...itor_1_3522703

[lazygamer]

Originally Posted by STOPGO

Nice to see The Hepworth being well supported by the general public, with 100,000 visitors already in the first five weeks. Here's the Y.E.P Link for Lazygamer.

http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.u...itor_1_3522703

[BannockBurnt]

Very good major feature in July's Architectural Review.

[Andy Urbanski]

Great review of "The Hepworth" in The Wall Street Journal. Yorkshire is getting a place to go for sculpture fans.

Set in the City That Shaped Her

By RICHARD HOLLEDGE

Wakefield, England

The headline in the local newspaper was categorical: "World is watching Wakefield." Quite a claim for this northern England city best known for its rugby team and the cultivation of rhubarb.

But it was a boast that could be made with some justification with the opening of a museum devoted to the career of Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975), not only one of the 20th century's most significant sculptors—known for simplified, abstract forms, often pierced by a hole, that variously evoked nature and the human figure—but one who was raised in Wakefield. If that was not newsworthy enough, the museum that bears her name was designed by Sir David Chipperfield, a leading architect.

The Hepworth gallery cost a recession-defying $57.6 million and is billed as the centerpiece to the city's $165 million regeneration plans. As Wakefield Council leader Peter Box told the watching world: "The real debate is about the effect it will have on the local economy. Wakefield is a better place for the Hepworth."

It is hard to disagree with him. Although this Yorkshire city with its brand-new shopping mall, pedestrian-friendly streets and sturdy Victorian civic buildings does not fulfill the stereotype of postindustrial despondency, it was, nonetheless, hit hard in the 1980s by the closure of coal mines and the collapse of manufacturing. Perhaps it was inevitable that it took inspiration from the success of the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, and followed the example of British museums such as the Baltic in Gateshead and The Lowry in Salford by exploiting culture as a force for renewal.

Simon Wallis, the enthusiastic director of the museum, says: "It is obviously preposterous to load everything on to us, but the gallery is one part of what I think is an ambitious scheme for regenerating Wakefield. A lot of locals disapproved of it at first, but the money cannot all be spent on shopping centers and housing. Culture has to play a major part."

So if the "real debate" is about the local economy, what about the museum and what about the art?

The building first. It is an uncompromising concrete structure of 10 boxy units with pitched roofs and odd angles. From one perspective it appears to rise straight out of the River Calder where a weir sends the water rushing past.

"It is a building that is proud of its bluntness," Mr. Wallis says, "and that chimes very well with the culture of Yorkshire, where I have never met so many blunt, direct people. That's the culture that Hepworth was part of. What you see is what you get."

Well, not entirely. So often a gallery's reputation can rest on its exterior appearance while the interior disappoints. Mr. Wallis cites Frank Gehry's Bilbao extravaganza, which he considers a "wonderful sculptural object from the outside, but not a good building to experience art."

This is not the case with the Hepworth. Inside it is a place of calm and space. Concealed skylights bathe the exhibits in natural light. And the windows, which seemed rather few and far between from the road, turn out to be ideally positioned to complement the works with their views of disused red-brick warehouses waiting their turn to be restored, the river bank lined with barges, and the town with its cathedral spire and mundane '70s tower blocks.
Hepworth Wakefield

www.hepworthwakefield.org

As for the works themselves, the museum has a powerful core of 44 full-size plaster and aluminium models for Hepworth's eventual bronze sculptures. They were the gift of Sophie Bowness, one of the artist's seven grandchildren. The Hepworth also has taken over the city's own collection of more than 6,000 paintings and sculptures, including some by Yorkshire's other celebrated artist, Henry Moore. There is the bonus of a relationship with The Tate in London, which has lent several pieces, including a Brancusi and a Mondrian.

"Imagine a Mondrian, here in Wakefield," exclaims the curator.

But it is the Hepworths we have come to see. The first gallery has only five pieces, including the stark "Figure (Nanjizal)" from 1958; "The Cosdon Head" (1949), a work of simple beauty; and "Spring" (1966), whose hollowed centre frames a horizon of distant hills. This glimpse of Hepworth's Yorkshire is fitting because, as we see in a video, the countryside was crucial to the artist, who as a young girl was taken by her father, a civil engineer, on his working trips across the county. In an extract from a BBC TV film made in 1961, she says: "I remember moving through the landscape with my father in his car and the hills were sculptures, the roads defined the forms."

Such is the clarity of the layout and the juxtaposition of her work with fellow contemporaries that it is possible to follow her development from early endeavors in wood and stone, the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement, to the inspiration of two expatriate modernists, the American Jacob Epstein and the Frenchman Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and finally her move into a more pristine abstraction.

The minutiae of her working day from pictures, newspaper cuttings and even her tools contrasts with the monumental prototype of one of her best-known sculptures, the aluminium, 19-foot "Winged Figure" (1963), commissioned for London's John Lewis department store. There are versions in wood and bronze of "Chun Quoit," the inspiration for the "Single Form" that was unveiled outside the United Nations building in New York in 1964.

The Hepworth is part of a bigger picture. Nearby is the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 500 acres of parkland dotted with contributions by more than 70 artists, and only a few miles farther is Leeds, with the Henry Moore Institute and its own outstanding art gallery.

As Mr. Wallis says: "It is a sort of golden triangle of organizations with sculpture as its DNA. It is part of a wider Yorkshire identity that the people here rally round, taking pride in the industrial past but also looking to the future. I think that's what the Hepworth Wakefield represents."

It appears to be working. The gallery hoped for 150,000 visitors in its first year, but within the first five weeks 100,000 have come through its doors.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...googlenews_wsj

[Goldie]

Was there on Friday - it's outstanding. We caught the train to Kirkgate, which was the busiest I've ever seen it - lots of the faces getting off our train popped up ten minutes later in the gallery.

The gallery is doing an obvious and wonderful job of populating the surrounding streets with pedestrian traffic. It took 3 - 4 minutes to walk it from the station, past the perfect reflection of the gallery in the calm water above the weir. The gallery was busy inside throughout and the cafe / terrace was packed too. The "plasters" gallery is great - as one of my friends said, it's set up a bit like a church, with Babs' massive prototype for the sculpture on John Lewis's London store as the altarpiece. Brilliantly the prototype was partly made using Isopon, the car body filler that will be known to any owner of a 1970's British Leyland product...

Given the increase in foot traffic and the sheer quality of the building and its surroundings, there is an obvious potential to develop businesses that depend on passing trade in the area.

One of Grand Central's London services pulled into Kirkgate just as we were crossing the bridge to the gallery. I'd hope that the proximity of the station to the waterside and the increase in traffic that it appears to be enjoying spur its restoration - it is a beautiful building

[STOPGO]

Originally Posted by Goldie

Was there on Friday - it's outstanding. We caught the train to Kirkgate, which was the busiest I've ever seen it - lots of the faces getting off our train popped up ten minutes later in the gallery.

The gallery is doing an obvious and wonderful job of populating the surrounding streets with pedestrian traffic. It took 3 - 4 minutes to walk it from the station, past the perfect reflection of the gallery in the calm water above the weir. The gallery was busy inside throughout and the cafe / terrace was packed too. The "plasters" gallery is great - as one of my friends said, it's set up a bit like a church, with Babs' massive prototype for the sculpture on John Lewis's London store as the altarpiece. Brilliantly the prototype was partly made using Isopon, the car body filler that will be known to any owner of a 1970's British Leyland product...

Given the increase in foot traffic and the sheer quality of the building and its surroundings, there is an obvious potential to develop businesses that depend on passing trade in the area.

One of Grand Central's London services pulled into Kirkgate just as we were crossing the bridge to the gallery. I'd hope that the proximity of the station to the waterside and the increase in traffic that it appears to be enjoying spur its restoration - it is a beautiful building

Great review Goldie.

[Leeds No.1]

http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.u..._map_1_3606077
Wakefield’s ‘cool’ Hepworth gallery putting Yorkshire on cultural map


TOURIST TRAP: Gallery is top hotspot.

Friday 22 July 2011 11:17

The Hepworth Wakefield has been dubbed ‘Britain’s Coolest Art Gallery’ by a top travel website.

MSN Travel have named the £35m gallery as one of the ‘Top 10 British hotspots and hip hangouts’ to visit this summer.

It is the latest boost for the new gallery, which opened to rave reviews in May.

A figure of 150,000 visitors per year was predicted.

But that figure was soon smashed and 137,000 visitors have now walked through the doors since it was opened just eight weeks ago.

A wide range of activities are on offer for families at The Hepworth this summer.

Visitors can tuck into a picnic in the gallery gardens, ride the zip-wire in the riverside Play Area or explore outdoor art commission The Black Cloud, by artists Heather and Ivan Morison. Inside, the Learning Studio will be a hive of activity, with free drop-in sessions and pre-bookable workshops.

Families can also create giant sculptures, landscape-inspired collages and sketches, or discover how to carve like Barbara Hepworth.

Gallery director Simon Wallis said: “We’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of positive support and number of visitors we’ve received since opening.

“It’s been a superb start for us and it’s great to see The Hepworth really putting Wakefield and Yorkshire on the cultural map.

“However, we are still totally focused on continuing to develop and enrich our offer, ensuring visitors have a wonderful experience and return regularly. We look forward to welcoming many more.”

[STOPGO]

Originally Posted by STOPGO

Nice to see The Hepworth being well supported by the general public, with 100,000 visitors already in the first five weeks. Here's the Y.E.P Link for Lazygamer.

http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.u...itor_1_3522703

Reposted. If no1 can get away with posting old Y.E.P. articles [ don't know why he feels the need to do this ] then I can repost my original post from June which is more or lees the same article.

[Val Verde]

Finally got round to having a look round the Hepworth today. Certainly an interesting gallery although personally speaking it would have been nicer if it had more variety of art (particularly for featuring works other than that by Barbara Hepwoth to therefore attract a wider audience), perhaps have more space and perhaps being a bit less white. Also it would be interesting to see how visitor numbers stack up over a longer period of time particularly with regards to avoiding the case of the Hepworth being someone one visits and hence never visits again and possibly having more interesting temporary exhibitions on in a bid to attract repeat visits. Is there any indication as to whether the works to convert the adjacent former mills into a mixture of uses including residential, offices, retail and restaurants is still ongoing or has it gone on hold?

Also had a brief look around Wakefield today. Is it me or is there an awful lot of off licences around Wakefield City Centre? Also is there going to be any effort made to perhaps revitalise the Ridings Centre and shopping streets Westgate and Kirkgate in a bid to better compete against Trinity Walk which is certainly proving popular as a shopping centre although it would surely be a bad thing if it's popularity is at the expense of the rest of Wakefield City Centre. Also has anyone occupied the new offices around Westgate station and are any hotels proposed in Wakefield considering I would have thought Wakefield could perhaps see room for perhaps some more hotel space imo.

[Skychaser 2005]

Having spent many happy hours shopping in the Ridings over the years, I was shocked at how run down it was with many empty units when I visited the other week.

Its so sad the see one side of the city doing well with the launch of Trinity Walk, whilst other areas are losing out. I have seen exactly the same effect in Bury when The Rock shopping centre opened there. I do wonder whether large new developments in relatively small towns/cities can work when there is limited demand for retail space.

[Leeds No.1]

Did Wakefield feel like it was a city going somewhere though? It's been a bit of a coup for one small city to have a major new art gallery that a city like Leeds would fight for and a new shopping centre delivered in the same period.

[STOPGO]

Originally Posted by Skychaser 2005

Having spent many happy hours shopping in the Ridings over the years, I was shocked at how run down it was with many empty units when I visited the other week.

Its so sad the see one side of the city doing well with the launch of Trinity Walk, whilst other areas are losing out. I have seen exactly the same effect in Bury when The Rock shopping centre opened there. I do wonder whether large new developments in relatively small towns/cities can work when there is limited demand for retail space.

I think Trinty is a postive, it's really not that big and links well with every other part of Wakefield. Put together with The Hepworth is win,win,win.

[Val Verde]

Surprised not to see any mention on here that the Hepworth in Wakefield has been shortlisted for the Stirling Prize in Architecture. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesi...?newsfeed=true

image hosted on flickr


Apparently the Hepworth is the favourite for the Stirling Prize although I always thought it looked a bit too battleship grey on the outside and far too (headache inducing) white on the inside. Still it will be a major accolade for the Hepworth to acheive should it win the Stirling Prize although out of the nominees I would give the Sainsbury Laboratory in Cambridge the title imo.

Is the Hepworth still proving to be a popular attraction with repeat visitors over a year since it's opening with temporary and changing exhibits to encourage more visits?

List of nominees:

2012 Olympic Stadium, London Populous
Odds 5/1

Maggie's centre, Gartnavel, Glasgow OMA
Odds: 9/2

New Court, Rothschild Bank, London OMA (with Allies & Morrison
and Pringle Brandon)
Odds: 4/1

The Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge Stanton Williams
Odds: 7/2

Lyric Theatre, Belfast O'Donnell + Tuomey
Odds: 4/1

The Hepworth, Wakefield David Chipperfield Architects
Odds: 3/1

[STOPGO]

It was nominated for some prize or other last year, the prize or one of the prizes that Kevin McCloud hosts on TV - might be one and the same,