Henry Moore Foundation

The Henry Moore Foundation is a registered charity in England, established to advance the understanding of Henry Moore's work and promote public appreciation of sculpture more broadly. Founded in 1977 with a gift from the artist and his family, the Foundation also administers the sale, exhibition, and conservation of Moore's work in perpetuity. It operates from two primary sites: the Henry Moore Studios & Gardens in Perry Green, Hertfordshire, and the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Through grants, fellowships, and exhibitions, the organization supports a wide range of sculptural and arts projects globally. The current director is Godfrey Worsdale.

The charity was established in 1977 through a gift from Moore and his family to foster public appreciation of the visual arts. Its history in Leeds began with a 1982 partnership with Leeds Art Gallery, creating the Henry Moore Centre for the Study of Sculpture. In 1988, the Foundation established the Henry Moore Sculpture Trust as a public face in Leeds, operating from a basement room in the city art gallery and opening the Henry Moore Studio at Dean Clough the following year to support contemporary artists. The Dean Clough studio closed in 1999, at which point the Trust and the Foundation amalgamated under the Foundation's name. The Leeds presence evolved into the Henry Moore Institute, which opened to the public on 22 April 1993.

The Foundation holds approximately 15,000 works by Henry Moore at Perry Green, encompassing monumental sculpture, maquettes, working models, drawings, prints, tapestries, textiles, graphic work, and sketchbooks. The collection spans diverse materials, including stone, wood, plaster, and bronze. Supporting this is the Henry Moore Archive, a purpose-built facility containing over 750,000 objects and documents dating back to 1914. The archive holds books, publications, letters, clothing, exhibition posters, photography, film, audio recordings, and preparatory materials like found objects. The Foundation actively loans works and organizes touring exhibitions internationally, sending pieces to institutions such as the Kremlin Museums in Moscow and the Pomodoro Foundation in Milan.

Around twenty of Moore's large-scale sculptural works are displayed across the Perry Green estate at any time, though the selection changes as pieces are loaned for external exhibitions. A notable historical loss from the collection includes Reclining Figure 1969-70, a 3.60 by 2.00 meter bronze sculpture weighing 2.1 tonnes, which was stolen from the Perry Green site on 15 December 2008. Investigators suspected the thieves used a crane to load the sculpture into a Mercedes van, intending to sell it for scrap for a fraction of its 3 million pound value. The Foundation also holds nine large colorful tapestries produced by Moore and skilled weavers from West Dean Studio, which are displayed in the Aisled Barn.

The Perry Green headquarters spans more than 70 acres of gardens and fields in Much Hadham. Henry and Irena Moore moved there during the Second World War after their Hampstead home was bombed, initially renting part of a farmhouse called Hoglands. They stayed for the rest of their lives, gradually purchasing surrounding land and buildings to convert into studios. The site includes several preserved workspaces: the Top Studio for carving, the Etching Studio converted from the village shop, the multifunctional Yellow Brick Studio, the Plastic Studio used for large-scale outdoor work, the Bourne Maquette Studio housing Moore's library of natural forms like bones and driftwood, and the Summer House for drawing. The grounds also feature the restored Hoglands home, a sixteenth-century Aisled Barn, the Sheep Field Barn gallery, and a modern accessible visitor center with a cafe.

The Perry Green estate is open seasonally to the public with an admission fee. In contrast, the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds offers free admission. Located on The Headrow next to Leeds Art Gallery, the Institute is housed in a grade II listed building converted from three former wool merchants' offices by architects Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones, and is connected to the gallery via a bridge. The Institute operates a changing program of sculptural exhibitions, maintains a research library and archive of sculptors' papers, and its staff administer the neighboring Leeds Art Gallery's sculpture collections.