Beyond Bloomsbury: Life, Love and Legacy
Special Exhibition
4 March – 5 June 2022
Adults £10, Concessions Available
This major new exhibition, in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery and Sheffield Museums, will explore the lives and works of an extraordinary group of writers, artists and thinkers, known as the Bloomsbury Group, who were active in England in the first half of the twentieth-century.
Key figures include the great writer and pioneer of feminist thought Virginia Woolf, her sister the painter Vanessa Bell, and the circle of friends that gathered around these young women.
The exhibition will also include new works by the artist Sahara Longe specially commissioned by York Museums Trust and Sheffield Museums to respond to the exhibition and the work of Bloomsbury artists.
Newly commissioned Bloomsbury-inspired murals by graphic artist Lydia Caprani punctuate the exhibition. Caprani also worked collaboratively with York LGBT Forum and Kyra Women’s Project to create decorative pieces that feature in the show.
Becky Gee, Curator of fine art at York Museums Trust said: “We are thrilled to bring these significant portraits to York to tell the stories of not only the artists, but the writers, dancers, activists and philanthropists that were connected to the Bloomsbury Group. The exhibition will allow us to celebrate the LGBTQ+ relationships of the Group and explore these histories in our own collection.”
Download our exhibition labels here.

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