Council criticised for £120k Henry Moore sculpture

‘The Arch,’ designed by the late sculptor Henry Moore, has been loaned to the council for the next four years, reports Sebastian Mann, Local Democracy Reporter and Marco Marcelline

A £120,000 modernist sculpture in a yet-to-be completed garden behind Waltham Forest Town Hall has attracted criticism from local politicians and residents.

The Arch designed by the late sculptor Henry Moore, has been loaned to the council for the next four years.

In a newsletter sent to residents last week, council leader Grace Williams said the installation was “made possible” thanks to civic fund contributions from Countryside Properties, a construction company involved in the redevelopment of the area around the town hall.

The sculpture will form part of the new Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Garden and Sensory Garden, which is set to open in June this year.

Cllr Williams added: “I believe great art should be free to enjoy by everyone and I hope you will make the journey to Fellowship Square to see it.”

But not everyone is on-board. Josh Hadley, the chairman of Waltham Forest Liberal Democrats, called it “non-essential” and said the council was “throwing away” £30,000 a year of allocated developer funding on the sculpture, at the same time as it cuts budgets to frontline services.

In February, the council announced it would be cutting spending by £18million over the next two years. The cuts – agreed as early as November 2023 – spanned from reductions to adult social care to “revising” help for private sector renters.

Walthamstow resident Natalie Proud said she was “perplexed” by the choice to put the Henry Moore sculpture behind the town hall, and questioned whether it would attract any new visitors to the area.

Describing the statue as “ugly”, she added that the £120,000 provided in funding for the statue could have been much better spent elsewhere.

The £120,000 figure given for The Arch is comprehensive: it includes planning application costs, installation, insurance and loan costs from the Henry Moore Foundation.

The sculpture will also be protected by security patrols and CCTV cameras, but at no extra cost to taxpayers.

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A spokesperson for the council said: “Fellowship Square, including the newly opened North site featuring the commemorative gardens and sculpture, is patrolled by security for the safety and wellbeing of our visitors and to protect the spaces.”

The Arch has been described by the Henry Moore Foundation as “the culmination of Moore’s thoughts on the body as architecture”. The original inspiration for the sculpture came from a fragment of bone, and according to the council, the statue “plays visually on the triumphal arches of past architecture as well as naturally occurring structures such as sea arches and caves”.

The sculpture was originally made in bronze, though this version is a fibreglass cast made in 1971 for installation on the roof of the Forte de Belvedere in Florence.

Others were more enthusiastic about the sculpture. Hilary Douse, who runs the Leytonstone Art Trail, said she considered Henry Moore a “really special” artist.

She said: “I grew up with Henry Moore’s Family sculpture, which was the symbol for the town I grew up in in Essex – Harlow. It is now dubbed sculpture town owing to the large volumes of sculpture they have amassed in the town.”

The installation of The Arch in Walthamstow was “made possible” by civic fund contributions from Countryside Properties, a construction company involved in the redevelopment of the area, Cllr Williams added.

Alongside the memorial garden, the Fellowship Square programme also involves the building of 433 new homes, new shops, a new civic building and 200 landscaped gardens near the town hall.

It was described by Waltham Forest Council as a “once in a lifetime” opportunity to create a new neighbourhood and cultural centre in the heart of the borough and has been in development since 2022.

Henry Moore was best known for his contributions to the Modernism art movement and his work in sculpting bronze.

The sculptor was born in Castleford, west Yorkshire, in 1898 and died in 1986 in Hertfordshire.

Editor’s note: This article was amended to make it clearer that the £120k sculpture was not paid for by taxpayers, but was instead funded through contributions from a developer.

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