In the Buckinghamshire countryside of England, carrying traces of a four-century history and aristocratic ambitions, Claydon House opens its doors to an extraordinary encounter this summer. Hosted by the National Trust in collaboration with White Cube, the exhibition “White Cube at Claydon” fills the manor’s historic halls and vast gardens with more than 40 contemporary artworks until September 14, 2026.
Inhabited by the Verney family since 1620 and frequently visited by Florence Nightingale, this historic building is already a monumental visual memory in its own right, with its Rococo ceilings, Palladian architecture, and Far East-inspired Chinoiserie rooms. The most remarkable aspect of the exhibition is that today’s artists establish a seamless dialogue with this memory rather than directly picking a fight with it. In the grand Saloon hall featuring royal portraits and historical battle traces, Cai Guo-Qiang’s painting Heaven Complex, created with colorful gunpowder explosions, sits directly opposite Van Dyck’s canvases. In rooms distinguished by intricate wooden paneling, Rachel Kneebone’s porcelain sculptures rise with a fragile structure on the brink of collapse, while El Anatsui’s massive tapestry woven from metal bottle caps offers a candid critique of the British Empire’s flamboyant past through colonialism and labor.
As you climb to the upper floors of the manor, the atmosphere becomes more intimate and uncanny. In the bedroom once used by Florence Nightingale, garments woven from human hair by Mona Hatoum, surreal forms by Julie Curtiss, and embroideries depicting nightmares by Tracey Emin are exhibited. In these rooms, the entrapment and isolation experienced by women throughout history are made visible once again through contemporary art’s eerie language.
Stepping outside the house into acres of meadows and the Fernery glasshouse, the encounter continues. While Tracey Emin’s pink neon illuminates the facade of the buildings, Anselm Kiefer’s Rapunzel sculpture withstands time among the plants behind the glass of the greenhouse. In the park area, Antony Gormley’s cast iron figures, Isamu Noguchi’s bronze meditation sculpture, and Gabriel Orozco’s clover-shaped table tennis installation invite visitors to engage with art in the open air.
Rescuing a historic manor from museum coldness and transforming it into a living, dynamic space where past and present reckon with one another, this selection stands as one of the most powerful interdisciplinary routes to visit in the English countryside until mid-September.
