Benton End: A Paradise of Pollen and Paint

In this immersive, multi-sensory exhibition at the Garden Museum, visitors will step into the gallery to find themselves in the heart of the home at Benton End. Here they will meet a rotating cast of friends: Cedric, his partner Arthur Lett-Haines, artists Lucian Freud and Joan Warburton, gardener Beth Chatto, and cookery writer Elizabeth David.

The exhibition will explore Benton End’s impact on a generation of artists, dramatising it as a living, evolving space of artistic, culinary, literary, and queer expression. Paintings, sketches, and sculptures made at Benton End by artists, alongside correspondence, personal belongings and everyday objects from the school will tell the story of a place where art, life and teaching blended.