The Goodwood Estate makes more of its reputation as a motorsports venue than its role in art patronage, but this summer the property, whose Jacobean pile is festooned with Canaletto, Van Dyck and Reynolds and which once leased a parcel of land to the Cass Sculpture Foundation, is making new inroads.

The five years since Cass’s exit have been fruitful for the West Sussex estate. The exhibition park took a larger bite out of the 11,000-acre grounds, expanding to 70 acres, and the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, lord of the manor, established a new eponymous sculpture garden with a thoughtful, narrative quality that could lure art lovers from flashier West Country ventures. The new Goodwood Art Foundation launches this weekend with five installations by Rachel Whiteread, plus a rare photo series by the artist in one of the park’s restored gallery spaces and works by supporting artists such as Rose Wylie, who paints fanciful pineapple-inspired figurines. These appear, along with three of Whiteread’s large-scale sculptures, in the woodland landscape, quietly manipulated by garden designer Dan Pearson to guide ramblers through the countryside.

Thick swaths of forest have been thinned out to allow breezes and long views to meadows, copses and, in time, a two-acre lake (the felled trees were chipped for mulch or piled up as insect habitats and wayfinders). ‘It’s all part of the editing process,’ says Pearson. He laid wildflower turf, and daisies and poppies have popped up in response.

‘I’ve tried to create a series of experiences that allow you to move gently through environments and unlock the senses so you’re able to enjoy the work in a more receptive way.’

Working in service to the art, he encourages traffic through a Yoshino cherry grove, then a hazel coppice and to a wooded area dappled with light. Human presence activates a sound work by Susan Philipsz — she’s piped in folk music, sung in a round, through speakers high in the trees.

Hardier walkers carry on through an open field to the beacon of Whiteread’s Down and Up, a new, monolithic staircase to nowhere, the cast concrete manifesting the artist’s typical void. It appears as an interloper, no more at home in the bucolic environs than a UFO come to take soil samples.

The circuit passes a tower of lipstick-red hexagons by Isamu Noguchi, bringing some much-needed colour to the journey. It swings past the old, restored Pavilion gallery, currently showcasing a video work and supporting paintings by Amie Siegel, and ends as it begins: at a new aluminium-clad café by Studio Downie, the same architects responsible for the two aforementioned galleries.

The space is a highlight, with banks of glass opening to an ample terrace floating in the trees. Pearson calls the new acreage a 24-season park — ‘a series of natural movements that unlock a new experience once every two weeks’. And the cafe is named 24 in homage. Naturally, it serves foraged ingredients, alongside organic produce from Goodwood’s Home Farm, and references the sea, just eight miles down the road. Bold ceramic works by Lubna Chowdhary give it the appearance of a gallery where you can sit and contemplate without wondering what to do with your hands.

A massive interactive sculpture by Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica will arrive later this summer, once the artist has constructed it in situ.

Goodwood Art Foundation’s inaugural art programme runs until 2 November 2025.

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