The Hepworth Wakefield: Sculpture's newest cultural landmark

The second museum to be dedicated to Barbara Hepworth - the first being her delightful house and garden in the centre of St Ives - sits awkwardly between busy overpass, rushing river and charmless industrial estates on the outskirts of Wakefield. This is also David Chipperfield's second major gallery opening of the year after Turner Contemporary in Margate and it shares that building's zigzagging roofline and conglomeration of chunky, shed-like structures, although here they interlock and commingle rather than look out to sea. The façade's harsh concrete slabs give the impression of a barracks or bunker, but rather than an uninviting, inwardly-facing museum, the Hepworth's conjoined forms actually subtly radiate outwards, connecting up the disparate bits of town and countryside it bisects.

A clue to this function is found in the light-filled entrance hall, where Hepworth's 'Six Forms on a Circle' of 1967 does something very similar. Her spiky shapes stand around each other like menhirs or ancient stones but create a conversational space in the middle, which is where Chipperfield's design also works best. His interior has the non-descript elegance of a Swiss or Scandinavian museum, allowing the works by Hepworth and others to take centre-stage. Upstairs, a stunning room of Hepworth holes, circles and ovoids introduces the main attraction's unique sinuous combo of line and form, none of which has been aped by the architect. In fact there's nary a curve to be found in the rectilinear galleries until you get to the bathroom taps.

All this understatement and subservience means minimum interference from the surroundings, but the spaces aren't warehouse-barren either, allowing just enough quiet time for intimate encounters with each sculpture. It's a surprisingly joined-up gallery experience too, considering its initially jumbled, boxy nature - each room giving way to another in a pleasing, interconnecting chain.

At the midway point come the 40 unfinished works, plasters, maquettes and prototypes donated by the Hepworth family in honour of their grandmother's birthplace in Wakefield. To some extent this display replicates what's already visible in her studio at St Ives - a sculptor at work, physically chiselling and hand-moulding plaster casts - but here we realise the depth of preparation behind a giant work like her 'Single Form' for the UN headquarters in New York and how she painted models in blueish greens to mimic the aged bronze they would eventually become.

There's a serious risk of 'bronze burnout' with all these lumpen Hepworths about the place - some of the monumental figures that make up the 'Family of Man' are immediately outside, more of them are gathered at the nearby glory that is the Yorkshire Sculpture Park - so it's a relief to see the wooden, stringed pieces indoors as well as some variety emanating from her lifelong lovers, friends and influences: Ben Nicholson, Wilhemina Barns-Graham and Henry Moore chief being among this group.

A welcome break from all the plinths also comes from Eva Rothschild, the first contemporary artist to exhibit here with her fine show 'Hot Touch'. Her best work is either floor-bound, like the resin rug, 'Fenix', precariously balanced on twig-like legs, or dangling from the ceiling like 'Stairways', each triangle of which is held daintily by a cast of Buddha's hand in a gesture of bliss. In short, her pieces dance about the space in a way that Hepworth never could or should.

There's much to be said about reserving neutral spaces for neutral voices. With all the variations on white, pastel stone colours and milky alabasters, the majority of work here couldn't handle the kind of busy environment favoured by the current starchitects of outrageous museum design (Gehry, Koolhaas et al), but there's no doubt Chipperfield's exterior might have been brighter. Hepworth herself had to appear to be a tough old bird when dealing with the patronising sexism she was continually faced with in a male-dominated art world, so perhaps this place does pay at least metaphorical homage to the lady after all: forbidding from the outside, all abstract thought and light within.

Hepworth Wakefield, Gallery Walk, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, WF1 5AW.
01924 247360, WF1 5AW. 10am-6pm, Tuesday-Sunday. Admission free. www.hepworthwakefield.org