Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield

All, Galleries, West Yorkshire, Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Yorkshire Sculpture Park offers a powerful and curious selection of sculptures in a glorious open air countryside setting. It’s an unusual combination of an artistic adventure and a weekend walk, so your dog can come too.

The Weston restaurant has an interesting lunch menu (£8-12) and classic teatime fare. The Lemon and Raspberry Drizzle cake and a cup of Lemon and Ginger tea went down well after completing the 4-mile circuit.

My favourite bits:

  • A hearty stroll up to the site’s centre past Damien Hirst’ s Myth (pictured),a flayed unicorn, and the half-peeled giant The Virgin Mother.
  • David Smith’s story in the Underground Gallery, told through his elegant and economic blacksmithing (pictured) and his weighty anti-war Medals of Dishonour.
  • An intimidating Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads (pictured) staring down like a disapproving council of aldermen, created by internationally renowned artist/political prisoner Ai Weiwei.
  • A pair of ornate medieval chessmen (pictured), King Hezekiah and Moses doing various unpleasant things to unfortunate snakes.

The scores:

Exhibits: 8/10. World famous names from the contemporary scene and generations past.

Environment: 9/10. A beautiful and unique site, loses a point for its remoteness.

Refreshments: 7/10. Tea and cake perfectly fine, I’ll need to try the lunch menu next time.

Cost & Location: 7/10. Free entry, plus £3.50 to £12 parking… and you’ll need a car!

Overall Score: 7/10.

The links:

4 thoughts on “Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield”

    1. This scoring thing is very tricky! It was the tricky accessibility and parking costs which pulled it down a bit for me. I think YSP but in Roundhay Park would be a 9/10 for me 🙂

      10/10… let’s see!

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      1. Yes, the parking cost is high but I’ve been to private museums over here and similar sculpture based museums overseas (e.g. Louisiana in Denmark) where the entrace fee would come to much more (assuming 2 people in a car for the YSP). What I don’t like is you pay for either 2 hours or all day – nothing in between

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      2. Totally agree. We’re very lucky in the UK to have so many free public museums and galleries and long may it continue! We got caught out by the 2 hour/all day rule, surely just make it hourly?!

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