Our expertise covers all aspects of sculpture – from Egyptology and Assyriology through to the modern, postmodern, and contemporary eras.

We are active in all areas of theoretical and historical sculpture studies; we pursue significant and original research that draws from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and historiographic and methodological perspectives.

We enjoy close relationships with internationally significant centres of sculptural display and study. These include the nearby Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the Hepworth Wakefield and the Henry Moore Institute.

Image: Tate, London 2019.

Contact us

Professor Jason Edwards
Cluster Director

jason.edwards@york.ac.uk

Related links

Singing Stone is one of the most recent sculptures installed on campus.

Sculpture in York

York is uniquely situated in Britain as a hub for sculptural studies. Our research draws upon the remarkable wealth of resources available in York and nearby, which include:

  • Displays of European and North American sculpture from 1945 to the present, including the modernist sculpture of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.
  • Collections of classical and neo-classical works, accumulated during the 18th and 19th centuries in the great country houses of the region.
  • Collections of sacred sculpture in York Minster and parish churches across the city and county.
  • A premier location for those seeking to combine the study of medieval sculpture with first-hand acquaintance of the objects themselves.

People

  • Professor Tim Ayers
  • Monumental art of the middle ages
  • Dr James Boaden
  • Sculpture in American post-war art; Sculpture and experimental film

Current Students

  • William Mead Cheek
    Anglo-Saxon architectural sculpture in its social, aesthetic, and theological context
  • Izabella Gill-Brown
    British Victorian Busts

  • Sammi Scott 
  • The Novelty of Reproduction: Translating Fine Art into Two-and-a-Half-Dimensions in the Long Nineteenth Century

 

Past Students

  • Cherissa Casey 
  • Sacred skulls, textiles, and medieval veneration: exploring the Holy Head reliquaries of Cologne
  • Martha Cattell 
  • Bone and Oil: The Long Nineteenth-Century Visual and Material Cultures of Whaling (AHRC funded CDA)
  • Koching (Ellen) Chao 
  • The spatial-visual capacity of public sculpture, and its influence on spectators’ sensibility to spatial configuration in Piazza della Signoria, Florence
  • Charlotte Davis 
  • The approaches of key carvers active in post-Restoration England: Francis Bird, Caius Gabriel Cibber, Grinling Gibbons, and Edward Pierce
  • Amanda Doviak 
  • At Cross Purposes? Sacred and Secular Figural Iconographies of the High Cross in the Northern Danelaw, c. 850-1000
  • Megan Henvey 
  • The Northern Group of Irish High Crosses: Simply a Geographical Term?
  • Rebecca Mellor 
  • Impact of 19th century museum display practices on modern interpretation of Roman erotic art

 

Research interests

We are keen to develop research at Masters, doctoral and post-doctoral level in the following areas:

  • Post-1945 modern and contemporary sculpture, and related art
  • Sculpture in American post-war art
  • Relationships between sculpture and experimental film
  • 20th-century modernism in Europe and America
  • English modernist sculpture
  • The Lady Lever sculpture collection
  • The sculpture of the Gothic Revival
  • Pre-Raphaelite and the New Sculpture
  • 18th-century sculpture
  • Italian Renaissance sculpture
  • Italian Baroque sculpture / architecture / decoration (inter-relationships and possibilities)
  • Late 14th to early 16th-century sculpture in Germany and the Netherlands
  • 12th to 15th-century sculpture and monumental art in Britain and Northwest Europe
  • The presentation and display of early medieval sculpture
  • The historiography of early medieval sculpture
  • The iconography of early medieval sculpture in Britain and Ireland

Contact us

Professor Jason Edwards
Cluster Director

jason.edwards@york.ac.uk

Related links