When Britain announced its first lockdown, the art collector, curator, and dealer Michael Hue-Williams was at his 50-acre estate in Little Milton, Oxfordshire. “I was sitting in my office, looking at this incredibly beautiful garden,” he tells me on the phone, “and thought, God, I could put it to use.” But what use? Obviously, an art park!
The estate is just 50 miles from the West End—an easy 45-minute train ride—and its rolling hills harbor deer, owls, and woodpeckers. Avenues of oak trees, large fields, and 16 acres of mature woodland lend themselves naturally to the project. A lake with an island sits in the middle of the gardens, and architectural projects built in situ—including three pavilions, one by Sir David Adjaye, another by the late American artist Vito Acconci, and a tennis pavilion by Richard Woods—provide an intersection between art and architecture.
