Perry Green, Hertfordshire

Red Cube

There were plenty of telephones in Hoglands, the Hertfordshire house of the sculptor Henry Moore. They were symbolic, perhaps, of Moore's central position in the art world for much of the 20th century and testimony to the fact that everyone from Kenneth Clark to Helmut Schmidt wanted to keep in touch with him. If the house phones were busy, Moore could pop out of the front door, cross the road, and use the public telephone box on the village green.

The K6 box was decommissioned in 2009 and in 2012 became the art gallery Red Cube* (regular readers may remember another post box gallery in Settle, Yorkshire). The gallery is a joint project of  Much Hadham Parish Council and the Henry Moore Foundation, which is based at Hoglands and opens the house, Moore's studios, and the surrounding grounds to visitors. Red Cube was opened earlier this year. It makes an agreeable stop on the short walk from Hoglands to the Hoops Inn, another building owned by the Henry Moore Foundation.

I think Henry Moore would have approved of all this. The gallery is a way of offering a small exhibition space to visitors, staff of the Foundation, clients from the Drawing Room (part of St Elizabeth's Centre, a national centre of expertise for epilepsy) and others. It helps to preserve a small landmark on the village green. And it enables people to engage with Moore's art in an active way – hats off to those who come and draw.

* The gallery's name wittily alludes to the name of London's famous White Cube gallery (Red Cube is also the title of a sculpture by Isamu Noguchi)

For more about the Henry Moore Foundation at Perry Green, go here.

For more about Red Cube, go here.