The impulse to place sculpture in the landscape is as old as civilisation. Drawing upon his extensive work as Founding Director of Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Sir Peter Murray CBE will examine how artists, in particular sculptors, utilise the landscape and other spaces to create and site works.
From major exhibitions to site-specific projects in this country and beyond, Murray has worked with some of the most important sculptors of the last four decades.
Many of these artists have, and continue to, challenge and confound expectations, contributing to the intellectual and physical landscape, transforming perception and our understanding of art. Examples of work by Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Andy Goldsworthy and a range of other established and younger artists will be used to illustrate and focus on the development of sculpture.
Sir Peter Murray founded the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 1977, which became Museum of the Year 2014. Some of the major exhibitions he has organised at Yorkshire Sculpture Park include Henry Moore and Landscape, Emile Antoine Bourdelle, Elisabeth Frink, Lynn Chadwick, Phillip King, Fritz Wotruba, Gio Pomodoro, Kan Yasuda, Magdelena Abakanowicz, Joel Shapiro, Auke de Vries, Marino Marini, Barbara Hepworth, Eduardo Chillida, William Turnbull, James Turrell, Isamu Noguchi, Nigel Hall, David Nash, Jaume Plensa, Tony Cragg, Joan Miró, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Sir Anthony Caro and Andy Goldsworthy, which won the South Bank Show Award for Visual Arts.
In 1988, Murray was awarded the National Arts Collection Fund Award and in 1989 was made Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art, as well as Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. He has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from the University of Lincolnshire and North Humberside, the University of Huddersfield, York University and the University of the Arts, London. In 1996, Murray was awarded an OBE for services to the arts and more recently received a CBE for continued services to the arts. In 2022, he received a Knighthood in the New Year’s Honours.
In 2012, Murray received both the National Critics Circle Art and Architecture Award and the Catalan Ramon Llull Award for Creative Arts, awarded in conjunction with the Principate of Andorra. He was a member of the Board and Vice President of the International Sculpture Centre in the USA and has been a Trustee of the Marino Marini Museum in Florence and the Paolozzi Foundation. He is a Trustee of Springhornhof, Germany and a member of the Advisory Board of the Middleheim Museum, Belgium. Sir Peter stepped down from his position as Executive Director of Yorkshire Sculpture Park in March 2022.
