The Hepworth Wakefield Museum launched a public fundraiser to keep a rare Barbara Hepworth sculpture on British soil.
Titled Sculpture with Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue and Red (1943), the sculpture is an elliptical object with a portion seemingly sliced off, revealing a series of colorful strings inside it. The sculpture was sold to a private collector in March last year at Christie’s London sale for a final price of £3.8 million ($5 million). However, in December, the UK government placed a temporary ban on the export of the work. The Department of Culture, Media, and Sports cited the reason for the “outstanding connection with our history and national life, its outstanding aesthetic importance, and its outstanding significance to the study of Dame Barbara Hepworth’s working practice and the evolution of her work.”
The ban was placed to allow a British institution to attempt to acquire the work by matching the price. The Hepworth Wakefield Museum in West Yorkshire stepped up for the task. They received an amount of $1 million from the Art Fund. Now, they have launched a public fundraiser to raise the remaining $3.9 million before the August 27 deadline. The work is important for the museum, which only has completed works from Barbara Hepworth before the 1940s.
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Eleanore Clayton from the museum said: “If we’re successful, it would be pretty much on permanent display to the public, either in Wakefield or we would lend it to important exhibitions around the country.” Prominent figures in the UK have voiced support for the campaign, including Sir Anish Kapoor, Richard Deacon, and Dame Rachel Whiteread.
