Sunken in its woodland setting, the new, beautifully-constructed Foundation Centre at Sculpture at Goodwood is quietly advancing the art, writes Phil Hewitt.

It's proving a remarkable year for the visual arts in and around Chichester - a year which is confirming the area's increasingly-international reputation.

July saw the reopening of the massively-expanded Pallant House Gallery, with a new state-of-the-art wing making the city a mecca for modern British art.

Rather more quietly and with considerably less fanfare, the year has also seen the opening of the Foundation Centre at Sculpture at Goodwood - a building which will have all the significance in the sculpture world that Pallant House now enjoys in the canvas world.

To that significance, Sculpture at Goodwood are now hoping to add visibility.

Wilfred and Jeannette Cass established the Cass Sculpture Foundation in 1994 and through Sculpture at Goodwood, the Foundation's principal objective is to advance the public's enjoyment and appreciation of 21st century British sculpture.

Mr Cass, who is 82, is confident that the new multi-purpose building will do precisely that, while at the same time fulfilling the Foundation's other great aims, namely improving and enabling the sculpture itself.

In a sense, the new building has grown out of the work that the Foundation has been doing in the dozen years since it opened.

The point is that the building will complement that work rather than overshadow it. The new centre is beautifully landscaped, sunken in the Foundation's woodland setting so that it is hidden from sight until the very last moment.

As Mr Cass says: "It's the sculpture that should make the impact here, not the building."

But that impact will now be supported by the unique range of facilities that the building offers - a library which will emerge as the most significant library of its kind; a gorgeous, relaxed conference centre which will gain the Foundation an international audience; and an archive which will serve as a remarkable resource to the works which the Foundation features and commissions.

Until now, as Mr Cass laments, the Foundation has been totally invisible. People who go there go back again and again, but the fact remains that outside Chichester, it is very little known. And even in Chichester, you don't have to go far to find someone who hasn't the foggiest idea what Sculpture At Goodwood is all about.

Mr Cass is hoping that the new centre will open up things considerably. As he says, it was no longer appropriate to hold the Foundation's archive in a private house. Part of the Foundation's educational mission is that the archive should be accessible - as it is now.

Growing up alongside the archive is the library, already the most significant collection of works on British sculpture of the 21st century.

"The whole idea of the Foundation is to record and to improve and to commission and to move forward the quality of what is happening in British sculpture."

The point is that the library complements the archive: "We have commissioned 140 artists by now. One of the parts of the commissioning process is that you ask for the books and all the other data that the artists have used in their lifetime. From that library we work out a yearly or two-yearly book and all the data goes into it.

"No other library is like it. The point is that we deal with people at all stages of their careers. We have people still at college and we have internationally-established artists. The mixture just can't be duplicated."

Since its inception Sculpture At Goodwood has enabled the fabrication of scores of key works by British sculptors including Anthony Caro, Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Antony Gormley, Thomas Heatherwick, Allen Jones, Phillip King, Langlands & Bell, Richard Long, David Mach, Eduardo Paolozzi, Tom Phillips, Marc Quinn, Gavin Turk, Richard Wentworth, Richard Wilson, and Bill Woodrow - as the library shows.

As for the archive, it holds the sketches, models and preparatory work behind the pieces that the Foundation has commissioned - again a resource unrivalled for the insight it gives into the creative process of so wide a range of working British sculptors.

But as Mr Cass recognises, it's not enough simply to have these things if they remain invisible. And this is where the conference centre comes in, a carefully and beautifully-designed room which enjoys a relaxed outside feel inside.

It will be used for major sculpture events but also for non-sculpture conferences, perhaps by bankers, accountants or town planners - all of whom will inevitably be exposed at the same time to what the Foundation does.

"The very moment they come here they will feel in a very different environment and they will feel relaxed and want to get out into the grounds."

And so the word will spread...

The conference centre, the library and the archive - built at a cost of just under £600,000 'out of my wife's housekeepings, we always say' - will all shape and reflect the Foundation's identity. As Mr Cass says, the art world revolves around London, New York and Paris. The Foundation Centre should mean that soon an important slice of it will start revolving around Goodwood.

"We feel now that with this building we have got the ground floor. We want to concentrate on getting better known."

And while Sculpture At Goodwood has a much more narrow focus than Pallant House, in that respect at least it is all part of the same plan.

"We are much more specialised, but they are a great organisation with a wonderful new building. Our relationship is very important. They will be settling down in their new building, but already we are saying to everybody that comes down here that once they have finished here they should go on to Pallant House.

"British sculpture is quite unique worldwide. It comes out of the fact that we had three great sculptors - Moore, Hepworth and Epstein - working at about the same time and not just creating great works but also teaching.

"The pieces that we have here are by some of the pupils of the people that they taught in the next generation. And that means that there is enormous strength in modern British sculpture."

A strength perhaps not sufficiently recognised in this country.

"One of the things that made us do this was that when we travelled around the world, we saw British sculpture everywhere, but we saw very little British sculpture here in the UK. Now that has changed a little bit. But you still don't see the depth of British sculpture."

Which is precisely where Sculpture At Goodwood comes in.

Article by Phil Hewitt, first published in 10th August 2006 edition of Chichester Observer.