Joe Hill, the director of Towner Gallery in Eastbourne, has been appointed director and chief govt of Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) in northern England. YSP, described as Europe’s largest sculpture park, is ready throughout the 500-acre, 18th-century Bretton Corridor property in West Yorkshire. “YSP is a spot I’ve admired for a very long time for its ambition, generosity and deep connection to artists and panorama,” Hill says in assertion.
Hill, who will take up the place from 14 April, is barely the third director of the park. Peter Murray retired in 2022 after 45 years on the helm. Clare Lilley, beforehand YSP’s director of programme and Murray’s successor, stepped down final summer season.
“The trustees’ appointment of Joe Hill responds to his confirmed monitor document of main cultural organisations by intervals of development, transformation and nationwide recognition, and his ambition for YSP and the area,” a YSP assertion says. Underneath Hill, Towner Gallery collectively gained Artwork Fund Museum of the 12 months in 2020 and hosted the Turner Prize in 2023.
Subsequent yr, the park celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. “[Hill] will lead YSP’s subsequent part of creative and strategic development, advancing its function as a centre for commissioning, studying and analysis; strengthening its long-term imaginative and prescient throughout its outside panorama, a number of distinctive indoor galleries and award-winning customer services,” the assertion provides. Earlier exhibitions have been devoted to artists akin to Robert Indiana, Amar Kanwar, KAWS, William Kentridge and Bharti Kher.
In 2020, YSP was awarded £804,013 from the federal government’s Tradition Restoration Fund that got to assist museums financially in the course of the pandemic. The park, an impartial charity, closed from March that yr, partially reopening the next July. YSP has additionally been awarded £4,010,397 over three years (2023-26) as a part of Arts Council England’s Nationwide Portfolio scheme. The present full-price admission payment to enter the park is £9.50.
