Long part of the arts landscape
The man behind the creation of the internationally renowned Yorkshire Sculpture Park retires next month after 45 years at the helm. Yvette Huddleston talks to Sir Peter Murray about his lasting legacy for the county.
These days the Yorkshire Sculpture Park has a farreaching pull, bringing in audiences from far and wide and attracting major artists from all over the world to exhibit their work there. Its status as a significant global centre for sculpture has grown from humble beginnings in 1977, thanks to the vision and tenacity of one man – founding director Sir Peter Murray who retires at the end of March. Murray was a lecturer in Art Education at Bretton Hall College when he had the idea of starting a sculpture park within the college’s extensive grounds on the Bretton estate.
“I had always been interested in trying to make art accessible and was working with my students looking at different ways in which to do that,” says Murray. “We started to explore the possibility of putting artworks in the landscape for children to look at.”
From there, came the idea of staging an exhibition in the grounds and out of that the concept of establishing a sculpture park began to develop, but it took some determination to make it happen. “It wasn’t easy to begin with – the grounds of the college weren’t open to the public, there was no money and no real appetite locally for contemporary art,” says Murray. “But the then principal of the college, Alyn Davies, was very supportive.”
They set up a charitable trust in the college and applied successfully for a £1,000 grant from Yorkshire Arts. “Once we got going, there was a sense that this was really worth pursuing because Bretton was a very special place with a very special landscape. I felt it would grow and grow – not to the extent it has, but I did think it had a lot of potential.”
The sculptor Michael Lyons, who died in 2019, was an early supporter. He had a studio in North Yorkshire and was also on the visual arts panel of Yorkshire Arts.
“He wanted to help and, working closely together, we managed to organise the first exhibition. It was a challenge – we didn’t have a huge amount of experience, we had very little money and no staff.” Nevertheless, they did it,