16/12/25
Beyond the Visual
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
28 November 2025 – 19 April 2026
“Go into the exhibition, touch everything!”
How often does a curator greet you like this? I’d hazard a guess at not very often – if at all. But things could be starting to change.
After all, Henry Moore told the photographer John Hedgecoe in 1968: “One likes people to want to touch, because touch is a part of your understanding of three-dimensional form. You don’t know roughness and smoothness, and you don’t know roundness and sharpness and all those. You’d know it much more intensely if you’ve felt it … Having these notes ‘Do not touch’ in the sculpture exhibition … Well, I want the people to touch … Touch is a part of your understanding of form.”1
While Moore was addressing his comment to everyone, blind and partially sighted gallery and sculpture park visitors are a particular category of people for whom touch is not just a part of their understanding of form, but pretty much is their understanding of form.
Read my full review here