2007 promises to be a gala year for Henry Moore, one of Britain's most celebrated and influential artists.

While visitors to Kew this autumn will have a chance to see a selection of some of Moore's most imposing sculptures against the stunning backdrop of the Royal Botanic Gardens, the annual visitors' season at Hertfordshire's Perry Green, where Henry Moore lived and worked for much of his life, opens on April 3, offering a privileged insight into the working practices and prodigious output of the artist.

This year's programme includes an arresting new exhibition, Moore and Mythology, which illuminates Moore's little-known literary collaborations and, later in the year, the opening of Hoglands, Henry and Irina Moore's home for many years which has been meticulously restored to reveal how the artist lived through his most prolific period.

The studios and grounds

Tours of Perry Green allow visitors to trace Moore's artistic process from the conception of a sculpture to its realisation on a grand scale. Displays in the Bourne Maquette Studio show how Moore's work often evolved from found objects such as driftwood, bone and shell, while the Yellow Brick Studio demonstrates the technical side of sculpting such as carving, casting, enlargement and patination.

The picturesque Aisled Barn houses ten large tapestry versions of Moore's work woven during Moore's lifetime in collaboration with the West Dean Tapestry Workshop and a walk round the estate offers the opportunity to see Moore's monumental sculptures set within beautiful grounds just as they were during his lifetime.

The tour also includes a visit to the Sheep Field Barn which this year contains the new exhibition Moore and Mythology, which opens on April 3 and runs until September 23, 2007.

The exhibition examines Henry Moore's literary projects, a fascinating if unfamiliar area of his work.

In the post-war years Moore was asked to provide illustrations for both The Rescue, a play conceived by Edward Sackville-West as a melodrama for radio with an orchestral score by Benjamin Britten, and Prométhée, André Gide's translation of Goethe's Prometheus, a dramatic fragment taken from Æschylus' Prometheus Bound. This exhibition will show not only Moore's illustrations, but other sketches, lithographs and sculptures inspired by these texts.

Moore and Mythology will later tour to Musée Bourdelle, Paris where it can be seen from October 17, 2007 to February 28, 2008.

Hoglands

This year, for the first time, Henry Moore's house will form part of the annual visitors' season at Perry Green as a separate tour.

Open to the public from June 5 to October 21, 2007 and during subsequent visitors' seasons, Hoglands was the house in which Henry Moore and his wife Irina lived and worked from the 1940s until their respective deaths in 1986 and 1989. In 2004, it was acquired by the Henry Moore Foundation and is currently undergoing a faithful restoration process in which, thanks to a generous long-term loan from Henry and Irina Moore's family, many of the original furnishings have been re-installed as well as the numerous found objects, ethnographic objects, books and artworks which once filled every room.

The process of re-assembling this fascinating domestic collection has been achieved in collaboration with Moore's surviving family, in particular his daughter Mary.

When this project is complete the ground floor will have the look and feel of the Moores' house circa 1970. Visitors will be able to experience this unique environment by booking a tour round the property.

A book, Hoglands: The Home of Henry and Irina Moore, will record this ambitious restoration project through essays written by those who remember the Hoglands of Moore's lifetime and those who have sought to recreate it. It will be illustrated by captivating photographs of Hoglands throughout the Moores' occupancy and the restoration process. The book will be published by Lund Humphries in July 2007 when it will be available to buy from the shop at Perry Green during the visitors' season and from www.henry-moore-fdn.co.uk the year round.

Visits to Perry Green are made by appointment. For further information, visit www.henry-moore-fdn.co.uk or telephone 01279 843333 to book your place on a tour.

9:12am Monday 2nd April 2007

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