Hauser & Wirth Somerset: A Rural Cultural Campus

Set on the edge of Bruton, Hauser & Wirth Somerset reimagines a derelict farmstead as a cultural campus where art, architecture, landscape and food converge. Since opening in July 2014, Durslade Farm has evolved into more than a gallery: it is a meeting ground of international contemporary art and Somerset’s pastoral rhythms.

The project was born from the vision of Swiss gallerists Iwan Wirth and Manuela Wirth, who, together with Ursula Hauser, co-founded the Hauser & Wirth gallery in Zurich in 1992. Their Somerset outpost was the couple’s first major venture outside metropolitan centres. It marked the beginning of a deeply personal engagement with the English countryside, where they had chosen to make their home. For them, Bruton was as much about community as it was about art: a cultural experiment rooted in rural life.

The transformation of Durslade Farm was led by Paris-based architects Laplace and Somerset-based benjamin+beauchamp, who carefully stitched 18th-century barns and 19th-century dairy sheds into a fluid sequence of exhibition halls and social spaces. Their sensitive intervention won both RIBA and Civic Trust awards, yet the architecture deliberately recedes, allowing artists, gardens and community life to take centre stage.

The galleries have since hosted a roster of modern masters and contemporary icons, from Louise Bourgeois and Alexander Calder to Phyllida Barlow and Jenny Holzer. Large-scale group exhibitions, residencies, and partnerships with local schools and universities have expanded the remit, making Bruton a stage for critical dialogue between rural landscape and global culture.

Outside, the landscape is no less vital. Piet Oudolf’s perennial meadow – Oudolf Field – unfurls as an immersive living artwork, a slow choreography of seasonal planting. At its summit stands Smiljan Radić’s 2014 Serpentine Pavilion, a ghostly structure relocated to Somerset the following year, fusing contemporary architecture with a pastoral setting.

Orbiting the gallery are anchors that extend the experience: Roth Bar, an evolving installation and social hub; Da Costa, a restaurant inspired by Iwan Wirth’s Italian heritage; and the Farm Shop, a champion of Somerset’s growers and makers. Even the 18th-century Durslade Farmhouse is part of the narrative, its interiors transformed by works from Guillermo Kuitca and Pipilotti Rist.

Somerset sits within a broader constellation of Hauser & Wirth locations. From its roots in Zurich, the gallery has expanded to London, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Menorca, with each site responding to its particular context. In the Swiss Alps, Hauser & Wirth St. Moritz anchors the gallery in the cultural fabric of the Engadin, while Hauser & Wirth Gstaad offers another Alpine perspective in the Bernese Oberland. Together, these spaces show the Wirths’ belief that art belongs not only in urban centres but also in landscapes shaped by history, nature and community.

In just over a decade, Hauser & Wirth Somerset has welcomed more than one million visitors, donated significant funds to local charities, and embedded Bruton into the global art map. Yet its essence remains local: a working farmstead recast as a cultural ecosystem, balancing the radical with the rooted, where art is lived as much as it is looked at.

At Durslade Farm in Bruton, Hauser & Wirth Somerset fuses art, architecture and landscape with exhibitions, Piet Oudolf’s gardens, Roth Bar, Da Costa restaurant and farm shop: a cultural campus rooted in Somerset.