Art & Culture

Rachel Kneebone Brings Her Surreal Porcelain Sculptures to the Wallace Collection

The artist’s unruly white sculptures will appear alongside Fragonard in the museum’s 18th-century townhouse home

August 19, 2026

Abstract white Rachel Kneebone ceramic sculpture with organic shapes, featuring a round sphere and fragmented limb forms on a circular base. — Rachel Kneebone *Dance,* (2017). Photo: Photo © White Cube (Stephen White)

Beginning on September 23, nine phantasmagorical white ceramic 21st-century sculptures by artist Rachel Kneebone will be on display in London in “Metamorphoses,” an evocative juxtaposition with the art of centuries past. Two of Kneebone’s sculptures, Bower and Temple, are on view for the first time, having been created especially for “Metamorphoses,” which will be spread through the rooms of the Wallace Collection.

Abstract white ceramic sculpture with intricate ribbons and a smooth sphere, displayed on a pedestal against a plain background. — Rachel Kneebone *After the Dance III,* (2018). Photo: © Rachel Kneebone. Photo © White Cube (Theo Christelis)

Artist Rachel Kneebone in a blazer and t-shirt standing next to a white wall sculpture. — Rachel Kneebone at her Studio, London. Photo: Copyright – David Bebber

Intricate white ceramic sculpture with nature-inspired details atop a cylindrical pedestal. — Rachel Kneebone *Temple,* (2026). Photo: © Rachel Kneebone. Photo © White Cube (Theo Christelis)

Located in a Marylebone mansion called Hertford House, the Wallace is in some ways analogous to the role of the Frick in New York. It is known for its Old Masters, which include works by Diego Vélazquez, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Peter Paul Rubens, Jean Honoré Fragonard, and Canaletto. Deliberately maintaining the spirit of an aristocratic home from two or three centuries ago, it places paintings alongside 18th-century French decorative arts treasures by Boulle and Riesener. There is even furniture associated with Marie Antoinette. And now, there is Kneebone, strides away from the Sèvres.

‘The Wallace Collection has long been a rich resource for me; a place of pleasure, delight and instruction, like discovering a new world with each visit,” said Kneebone, continuing, “I would take away so much, and now it is such an honor to be invited to this time to leave something behind, to add to the Collection.”

There are some especially good object-to-object pairings. Dance will sit on a table in the Billiard Room near the 17th-century bronze Borghese Dancers. Kneebone’s piece is made from disembodied limbs that suggest something chaotic, while the historic dancers are controlled and stately. Her After the Dance sculptures, with legs protruding from them, will be placed amid the elaborate Baroque decoration of the Back State Room and the bronzes in the Great Gallery. And Pull, a kind of unfurling, hive-like construction, will hang from the ceiling near on the first-floor landing.

The installation is presented by the Wallace Collection with support from White Cube, which represents Kneebone, as well as Christian Levett and Musée FAMM.