Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity

Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity has been conceived as a multi-layered exploration of the work and significance of one of Britain’s most well known modern artists. We are hugely grateful to all those who advised, assisted and contributed to this publication, which we hope will offer fresh insights into the artistic ambitions and public profile of an artist who for a long period was respected by both his peers and by broad swathes of the public.

The publication would not have been possible without the generous support of the Henry Moore Foundation and its trustees. Particular thanks are owed to Richard Calvocoressi and Anita Feldman for their commitment to the project from its earliest days, and to Dr Sebastiano Barassi, James Copper, Martin Davis, Joanna Hill, Michael Phipps, Emma Stower and Emily Unthank at the Foundation for sharing their time, expertise and resources with not only the Tate team but also the many authors involved in the initiative. Dr Chris Stephens of Tate Britain was a senior curatorial adviser to the project, and throughout offered guidance and support. I should also like to take this opportunity to express my profound gratitude to the members of the Academic Advisory Board who helped frame the project at the beginning and throughout offered assistance and in many cases peer reviewed the project’s essays: Professor Dawn Ades, Professor Andrew Causey, Professor Martin Hammer, Dr Sarah Turner and Dr Jon Wood. Sadly, Professor Causey passed away in 2014, and in recognition of his unstinting support I should like to dedicate the project to his memory.

As the first Henry Moore Foundation Research Fellow, Professor Anne Wagner skilfully laid the foundations for the project and helped mapped its contours during her year with Tate. She was succeeded by Dr Alice Correia, who, among other project texts, authored almost all the entries on individual sculptures, selected archive items for the Resources section and compiled the bibliography. We are grateful to her for her dedication to the project. Conservators Lyndsey Morgan and Rozemarijn van der Molen contributed the technique and condition reports that form a vital part of the catalogue, while the doctoral research of Robert Sutton, who undertook a collaborative PhD with the University of York and Tate, also fed into and strengthened the entries. I should like to express thanks, too, to the many authors who contributed to the broader consideration of the questions posed by the project, and who, through their reflections, now help us see Moore’s work and legacy in a new light. It was a pleasure to work with them, and I am grateful to them for their enthusiastic support. The project would not be what it is without the significant contributions of all these individuals, and the support provided by research assistants, in particular, Mia Curran, Stacey Evans, Ann Harezlak and Deborah Lennard.

Within the Tate Research project team a great debt is owed to Christopher Griffin, Collection Research Manager, for his careful editing of the project’s catalogue entries, and to Alex Cary, Digital Editor, for his skills in realising this ambitious venture. I am deeply grateful to them both for their dedication to the project. Thanks are also due to those who assisted them in various capacities, particularly Mark Byers, Lucy Roblin, Olivia Tait, Jonathan Vernon and Maud Whatley.

Such a complex project could not have been achieved without the support and professionalism of colleagues in a range of other departments at Tate. Photographing all seventy-four sculptures in the round required the collaboration of various members of staff and we are especially grateful to the following individuals for their commitment to this important aspect of the project: David Clarke, Ana Escobar, Mark Heathcote and Marcella Leith from the Photography department; Mikei Hall, James Stewart and Liam Tebbs in Art Handling; Melanie Rolfe in Sculpture Conservation; and Catherine Clement and Bronwyn Gardner in Collection Management.

Thanks are also owed to members of the curatorial team who engaged with the project, notably Dr Emma Chambers and Dr Jenny Powell. The Tate Library, Archive and Public Records teams also played a crucial role in ensuring the success of the project, and I would like to record my thanks here to Allison Foster, Adrian Glew, Jane Kennedy, John Langdon, Maxine Miller and Jonathan Woodcock. As with all our online research publications to date, we are deeply grateful for the skilled contribution of Alex Pilcher in Tate Digital for her design work. Tate’s Collection Database Manger Madeline Betts provided considerable assistance, while Bernard Horrocks in the Legal department has given invaluable advice. In Development Emily Magnuson, and before her, Susan Foster, helped guide the project throughout its gestation. Special thanks are also owed to Professor Nigel Llewellyn, former Head of Research, and to other members of the Research Department, for their support of this project.

We would not have been able to create such a well-illustrated scholarly project without the support and generosity of individuals and organisations that shared images with us, notably the Henry Moore Foundation to whom we are deeply indebted and the photographer Gemma Levine. Thanks are also owed to Sean A. Weaver and Felicia Cukier at the Art Gallery Ontario, Jeremy Smith at the London Metropolitan Archives, Peter Osborne at Osborne Samuel Gallery, and Philip Stokes. For permissions to reproduce texts we are grateful to Fariba Bogzaran from Lucid Art Foundation, Patrick Cunningham from Barford Sculptures, Douglas John and Richard Wentworth.

This project is the fourth in a series of major online publications at Tate that aim to offer new knowledge and fresh insights about Tate’s collection through an interlinked array of in-depth analyses of individual artworks, thematic explorations and archival resources, and we remain grateful to the Getty Foundation’s recent Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative in helping us develop the ideas and workflows for online scholarly publishing.