During our Summer trip to the United States of America, we were delighted to visit Yale Center for British Art and meet with the Department of Paintings and Sculpture team.
Opened in 1977 through the generosity of Yale graduate and philanthropist Paul Mellon, it holds the largest and most significant collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. Housed in a celebrated modernist building designed by Louis I. Kahn, the museum is situated on the Yale University campus in the city of New Haven, Connecticut.
Hignell Gallery artist Sophie Ryder's iconic sculpture The Minotaur and The Hare on a Bench sits within this prestigious collection which features masterpieces by George Stubbs, J. M. W. Turner and Francis Bacon. Ryder's sculpture entered the collection at Yale as a gift of the Libra Foundation, from the family of Nicholas and Susan Pritzker. Alongside Sophie Ryder, this major gift of over 40 important artworks also includes Gwen John, Vanessa Bell, Keith Vaughn, Sir Anthony Caro and Henry Moore.
Dating from 1995, the bronze sculpture depicts two of Ryder's most enduring mythological characters, the anthropomorphic Hare, who went on to evolve into Ryders Ladyhare, and her protective, doting Minotaur.
Human and animal hybrids called ‘therianthropes’ may be traced back to the Upper Paleolithic period of human history, during which artists produced cave paintings like the ‘bird-man’ in the Lascaux caves and the ‘deer-man’ or ‘sorcerer’ in the cave of Les Trois-Frères, the ‘bison-woman’ painting-sculpture in the Chauvet cave and the ‘lion-man’ sculpture in the Stadel cave. By exploring such hybrids they enable artists to blur the bounderies between the human and non-human aspects of Nature and between the physical and metaphysical worlds.*
The bronze surface is beautifully textured with the inclusion of found objects including the cogs and gears of a pocket watch which add to the other-worldlyness of the figures.
Ryder went on to create a monumental version of the sculpture, making it by hand in plaster at full scale. While the plaster was wet the surface texture was created by inserting full-sized machine parts and the Minotaur sports a hairy back made of bed springs. Today, this monumental sculpture can be found in private collections and its two permanent public homes in the UK - Cheltenham Town Centre and Canary Wharf, which is home to London's largest collection of outdoor public art.
* With thanks to the writer Stephen Baycroft for these insights
October 8, 2026
