Ray Harryhausen: Myths in Motion — The Arc, Winchester, 26 September 2026 – 16 February 2027
Photo: Hassocks5489, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0 Ray Harryhausen built his creatures in a room at home, one frame at a time, and they went on to move through films that several generations now remember shot by shot: the skeleton duel of Jason and the Argonauts, the Medusa of Clash of the Titans, the Cyclops of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Myths in Motion brings more than seventy of those objects to Winchester, drawn from the archive of the Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation and selected for this gallery rather than toured as a package.
The exhibition was created for The Arc, the Hampshire Cultural Trust venue on Jewry Street, and it carries personal contributions from the animator’s daughter, Vanessa Harryhausen, placed through the rooms. What is on show is the material side of a craft that audiences only ever saw as light: armatures, models and the working remains of stop-motion animation, the figures themselves rather than the films they ended up inside.
Practical details
- Dates: 26 September 2026 – 16 February 2027
- Opening hours: Monday to Saturday 9.30am to 5pm, Sunday 11am to 5pm
- Admission: £5.45 adult, £4.50 concession, free for children aged 16 and under
- Where: The Gallery, The Arc, Jewry Street, Winchester SO23 8SB, United Kingdom
- Organised by: Hampshire Cultural Trust, with the Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation
- Information: arcwinchester.org.uk — 01962 398046
Cultural Heritage Online lists this exhibition as a piece of twentieth-century heritage that is easy to overlook: the physical workshop of special effects, kept and catalogued by a foundation, before the technique it documents passed out of use.
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