Impressions: Stories Behind the Collection

Barbara Hepworth’s "Rock Form (Porthcurno)" in the Main Entrance Gallery

After more than two decades in the Museum’s Main Entrance Gallery, where it warmly welcomed visitors, the Norton Simon’s great sandstone sculpture of Buddha Shakyamuni has been relocated to the focus niche off of the stairwell gallery to anchor our new rotating installations of South and Southeast Asian art. In its place, we mounted Barbara Hepworth’s large-scale bronze Rock Form (Porthcurno), which was previously situated in the Sculpture Garden at the far end of the Café. Modeled and cast in 1964, Rock Form (Porthcurno) is one of a series of sculptures that Hepworth began making in the 1960s to explore the creative possibilities of metal. For aesthetic inspiration, she turned to the coastal landscape of Porthcurno, a town in Cornwall, England, near her home and studio. Rock Form (Porthcurno) abstracts and monumentalizes the region’s seaside caves, with their distinctive perforations created by the ebb and flow of the tides.