YSP has renamed its main gallery the Peter Murray Gallery (formally Underground Gallery), in honour of the Park’s founder, Sir Peter Murray CBE.

The new name was officially unveiled at a special event on 17 September 2026. The renaming celebrates Sir Peter’s transformative leadership since he founded YSP in 1977 with a £1,000 grant, establishing what would become Europe’s largest sculpture park and a globally respected centre for modern and contemporary sculpture. 

Born in Middlesbrough, Sir Peter studied Fine Art and Education before becoming Principal Lecturer in Art Education at Bretton Hall College, where he founded Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 1977. His pioneering vision established Britain’s first dedicated sculpture park, introducing a new model for presenting sculpture outdoors and making art accessible beyond traditional museum walls. 

For more than 45 years, Sir Peter led YSP from its humble beginnings to an internationally renowned institution that welcomes around 500,000 visitors each year, employs more than 200 people and contributes more than £10 million to the regional economy. He was awarded a CBE and later a knighthood in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to the arts. Under his leadership, YSP worked with more than 1,000 artists from over 40 countries, championing residencies, major exhibitions and learning programmes that have inspired two generations of artists and creatives. 

Opened in the early 2000s, the gallery has been a space for large-scale, site-responsive exhibitions by leading international artists. Recent exhibitions in the gallery include the current Hold to This Earth, the first group exhibition presented in the gallery in 20 years, bringing together more than 60 works by contemporary Indigenous North American artists from Tia Collection; William Kentridge: The Pull of Gravity, which featured more than 40 sculptures and multi-media works; and Bharti Kher: Alchemies, a powerful exhibition of sculpture and two-dimensional work by one of the world’s leading contemporary artists. 

These exhibitions have reinforced the gallery’s role as a ground-breaking space for ambitious projects that explore landscape, material and community. Its new name celebrates the vision of the person who made such a space possible, while looking ahead to the next generation of artists and audiences who will get to enjoy and experience YSP as a world-leading contemporary arts space.