Guided Tours
Gallery tours are a great starting point if you are a first-time visitor or if you want to discover more about our art, artists and architecture.
We welcome single visitors and large groups alike and by keeping prices low, based on exhibition entry, we encourage local residents and small groups to participate.
Explore the different options below and request a private tour today!
Request a tour
£5 + exhibition entry per person. Exhibition entry is FREE for Members, Wakefield District residents and under 18s.
Request a tour by clicking this link, scanning the QR code below or calling us on 01924 247360.
To ensure that we have sufficient time to structure and prepare your tour, please consider giving us at least 7 days’ notice.
Gallery Tour
In a comprehensive overview across ten gallery spaces, you will discover Wakefield’s art collection, as well as works by Barbara Hepworth and other contemporary international artists.
We run a free highlight tours at 11.15am on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.
Tour focus: A Living Collection, Still Lives, The Hepworth Family Gift, Sylvia Snowden, Ronald Moody, Igshaan Adams.
Collection Tour
Encounter three of the oldest artworks in Wakefield’s art collection by Dutch masters that date back to the seventeenth century alongside works by Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Eileen Agar, Jacob Epstein, Ben Nicholson, and Lucie Rie.
Tour focus: A Living Collection, Still Lives, The Hepworth Family Gift
Adams, Moody & Snowden Tour
Explore Sylvia Snowden’s expressionist and monumental figures in pastel and acrylic, Ronald Moody’s post-war experimentation with concrete and resin casting, and complexities of identity under South African apartheid in large tapestries by Igshaan Adams.
Tour focus: Sylvia Snowden, Ronald Moody, Igshaan Adams
Barbara Hepworth Tour
Trace the artistic development of Barbara Hepworth, whose early experiences of the industrial and rural landscapes of Yorkshire shaped her extraordinary life and career. The tour includes 44 prototypes in plaster, aluminium and wood, as well as drawings, lithographs and screen prints.
Tour focus: A Living Collection, The Hepworth Family Gift
Garden Tour
Tom Stuart-Smith’s design draws inspiration from its unusual setting between 19th-century red-brick mills and a 21st-century art gallery, edged by the River Calder. It echoes the striking, angular shapes of the David Chipperfield-designed gallery while harnessing a naturalism that reflects Barbara Hepworth’s deep connection to the landscape.
Tour focus: The Hepworth Wakefield Garden
Architecture Tour
In the tour, you will learn how David Chipperfield’s design of the galleries allows the introduction of daylight through skylights, how we obtain most of the heating and cooling from the river’s flow, and how the pigmented concrete façade informs the sculptural and historical reading of the building.
Tour focus: Our architecture, Our history
