iWallace CollectionMarylebone
Metamorphoses: Porcelain Sculpture by Rachel Kneebone
Acclaimed artist Rachel Kneebone presents nine white porcelain sculptures throughout the Wallace Collection's galleries, including two newly created works, in dialogue with the museum's historic decorative arts.
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At the top of the Wallace Collection's main stairs, between Boucher's paintings of the sun rising and setting, stands a white porcelain heap of columns, barnacles and tendrils, with a scallop shell holding a pearl. That's Temple, one of two pieces Rachel Kneebone made for this display.
There's no exhibition room. Nine of her glossy white sculptures are placed through the house's galleries, and a leaflet tells you where. Pearl IV and Pearl II flank Boucher's Jupiter and Callisto, Bower stands in front of Fragonard's The Swing, and Dance, a crowd of legs and toes, sits on a table in the Billiard Room.
The Guardian's Chloë Ashby called it marvellous and wrote that this "shape-shifting art rewards slow looking": you can walk around the pieces, and under one of them. It's free. Pick up the leaflet, because the nine works are spread across a big house.
Editor's pick
Nine white porcelain sculptures, two of them new, placed throughout the Wallace Collection's galleries among its historic decorative arts.
Look for
Temple at the top of the stairs
Look for the scallop shell and its pearl, set between Boucher's The Rising of the Sun and The Setting of the Sun.
The two Pearls and Jupiter and Callisto
Pearl IV and Pearl II sit either side of the Boucher and, as the Guardian put it, "lunge towards one another like lovers", just as the god does towards the nymph.
Bower in front of The Swing
Ashby only noticed how silvery Fragonard's palette is once the white porcelain was standing in front of it.
Pull over the landing
It hangs from four thin wires above the upper landing, with bubbles "ready to pop" pushing out of a clump of ribbons and roses.
Dance in the Billiard Room
A throng of legs and toes on a table, placed to echo the bronze Borghese Dancers on the nearby wall.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Going Solo
- Locals Who've Seen It All
Skip if
You want a self-contained exhibition: the nine pieces are scattered through the permanent galleries.
Also at Wallace Collection
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Image credits
8
- Metamorphoses: Porcelain Sculpture by Rachel Kneebone© Rachel Kneebone. Photo © White Cube (Theo Christelis)
- RootsCourtesy of The Photographers' Gallery
- Sanlé Sory: Colour Years© Sanlé Sory, 2026. Courtesy of Tezeta.
- Snap Happy! How Children Became PhotographersCourtesy of The Photographers' Gallery
- Wallace CollectionSimon Burchell / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- The Photographers' GalleryThe wub / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Royal Academy of ArtsYair Haklai / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Wellcome CollectionOsama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0