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# This Gallery Wants You to Touch the Art
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/henry-moore-studios-gardens-wants-you-to-touch-the-art/
- Published: 2021-05-17T20:08:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T15:11:09.000Z
- Description: At an upcoming exhibition of Henry Moore’s works, visitors will be allowed — and even encouraged — to touch the art with their bare hands.
- Author: Hakim Bishara
- Tags: Art, Edmund de Waal, Henry Moore, United Kingdom, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-large, #Import 2025-11-24 09:11 (2021, 2022, part 1)

Typically, the last thing galleries and museums want to see you do is touch the artwork. And since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, that became even a bigger taboo. But at an upcoming exhibition at the [Henry Moore Studios & Gardens](https://www.henry-moore.org/visit/henry-moore-studios-gardens?ref=hyperallergic.com) in the suburbs of London, visitors will be allowed — and even encouraged — to feel the displays with their bare hands.

Curated by the artist and author Edmund de Waal, the exhibition [*This Living Hand*](https://www.henry-moore.org/whats-on/2021/05/19/this-living-hand?ref=hyperallergic.com) will open on May 19 after more than a year of delays due to the United Kingdom's recurrent COVID-19 lockdowns. The exhibition will explore the role of touch and the iconography of the hand in the works of Henry Moore, a famed British sculptor who emphatically believed in the importance of tactile experience in enjoying works of art, particularly sculptures.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2021/05/image-2-1.jpg)

Installation view with Henry Moore's "Mother and Child" (1978) (foreground) and "Reclining Figure: Hand" (1979 ) (background), flanked by Edmund de Waal's stone benches "tacet X and XIII" (2020)

"In the past year, our hands and our experience of touch have taken on a whole new meaning," said de Waal in a press release for the exhibition.

"To be able to invite people to encounter Moore’s sculptures through touch is now even more extraordinary," he continued. "In this exhibition, we see a life of reflection on how hands become sculptures. We are returned to what knowledge our own hands hold.”

The exhibition will feature a selection of sculptures by Moore, which visitors will be invited to caress with their hands, as well as a group of drawings and sculptural works charting Moore’s interest in hands as subject matter. Works on displaywill include bronzes like "King and Queen" (1952-53) and "Reclining Figure: Hand" (1979), in addition to studies that Moore had made of his own and others’ hands.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2021/05/image-5.jpg)

A 1968 portrait of Henry Moore with raised hands, captured by John Hedgecoe, welcomes visitors to the exhibition.

As COVID-19 safety remains a concern, de Waal has created a stone washbasin for visitors to cleanse their hands before entering the gallery. Carved into a rock, the "stone for two hands and water" takes as its form a Japanese [tsukubai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsukubai?ref=hyperallergic.com), traditionally located at the entrance of holy sites for visitors to purify themselves by the ritual of washing hands and mouth.

The exhibition will also include a series of sculptural benches, carved in Horton stone, made by de Waal for visitors to pause and reflect on what should definitely be a touching experience.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2021/05/image-7.jpg)

Edmund de Waal, "stone for two hands and water" (2021)