Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Cornwall studio where Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) found space to work, and explored bronze for the first time.
Similar studio museums...
- Dorich House Museum, United Kingdom - the custom-built studio of the sculptor Dora Gordine (1895-1991)
- Tromp's Huys Museum, The Netherlands - a sixteenth-century house owned by Betsy Akersloot-Berg (1850-1922)
Feature List
- Artist in residence
- Guided Tours
- Family Activity trails
Barbara Hepworth married Ben Nicholson in 1938, and when the war came they evacuated with their young family to Cornwall. The Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden is based in the studio Hepworth established in 1949, in search of more space to work on her sculptures. After the war, and her divorce from Nicholson in 1951, Hepworth became an active figure in the developing St Ives modernist art community, and she was awarded the Freedom of St Ives in 1968 to acknowledge her contribution to the town. Trewyn Studio remained her studio until her death in 1975. Here she explored the potential of bronze for the first time, as well as continuing her work with stone and wood carving. 'Finding Trewyn Studio was a sort of magic,' Hepworth wrote, 'Here was a studio, a yard and a garden where I could work in open air and space.'
The studio was established as the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden the year after Hepworth's death in 1975, and has been managed by Tate since 1980. Today, visitors to the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden can see some of Hepworth's most monumental sculptures in the environment for which they were created.
