Earthly Paradise
Radical Living in the UK
Saturday 3 October 2026 - Sunday 28 March 2027
Exploring the people and places that have helped shape art and activism across Britain over the last 200 years.
This autumn, William Morris Gallery presents Earthly Paradise: Radical Living in the UK, a major touring exhibition that explores the people and places that have helped shape art and activism across Britain over the last 200 years. Through objects, painting, drawing, photography, sound and archival material, Earthly Paradise highlights individuals and communities that defied contemporary conventions and the homes they created to explore their new visions of society. The exhibition considers the role that money and class have played in providing access to these spaces and the freedom to challenge social norms. It traces the roles activist groups and those excluded from and overlooked by mainstream society have played in imagining new ways of living and seeing the world.
Spanning two centuries, the exhibition spotlights the homes of many important British artists and thinkers, including William Morris’s Red House; Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant’s modernist home, Charleston; Cedric Morris’s Benton End; Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage; and Dial House, the self-sustaining anarcho-pacifist open house founded in 1967 by Penny Rimbaud and Gee Vaucher, members of the influential anarchist punk band Crass.
Earthly Paradise is part of Art Fund’s Going Places programme, a series of exhibitions touring the UK, created by museums working together to share their collections. The exhibition has been developed in partnership with Tŷ Pawb in Wrexham, Blackwell – The Arts & Crafts house in Bowness-on-Windermere, and Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh, who are working together under the name Four Lanterns.
The exhibition is curated by Hadrian Garrard, Director of William Morris Gallery; Linsey Young, independent curator; and Tayyabah Tahir, Assistant Curator at William Morris Gallery. The exhibition brings together works from the collections of the William Morris Gallery and Blackwell – The Arts & Crafts house, alongside works from collections across the UK including Tate, National Trust, National Portrait Gallery and the Lee Miller Archive. It will be accompanied by ten newly commissioned and freely available texts that draw out some of the many perspectives explored in the exhibition by writers including Charlie Porter, Sheena Patel, Dr Lucy Brownson, Natalie Olah and Adam Sutherland.
Following its presentation at William Morris Gallery it will tour to Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham (April – September 2027), Blackwell – The Arts & Crafts house, Bowness-on-Windermere (October 2027 – February 2028) and Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh (March – September 2028).
Going Places is an Art Fund programme made possible with major support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and The Julia Rausing Trust, with additional support from a generous group of trusts, foundations and individuals. The Four Lanterns network is supported directly
by the Woven Foundation. Art Fund is continuing to fundraise to reach the full potential of the programme and make the biggest impact for museums and visitors across the UK.
Earthly Paradise is also supported by The Ampersand Foundation.
Title images:
Photograph of Edward Carpenter and his partner George Merrill, c.1900. Digital image provided by The John Rylands Research Institute and Library, The University of Manchester
The Ghetto, 43 Kitchen, 1993, Tom Hunter
Supporters and partners
Exhibition highlights
