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The Hepworth Wakefield was designed by Sir David Chipperfield to celebrate the work of Dame Barbara Hepworth in her birthplaceof Wakefield in Yorkshire. It opened in 2011 and this year has won the Art Fund Museum of the Year, and with it £100,000 – the largest museum prize in the world. One of its most popular exhibits is a full-scale, 5.8m-high prototype for Hepworth’s Winged Figure, a commission from John Lewis for its flagship store on Oxford Street in London. The design was chosen to echo John Lewis’s associations with resurgence and aspiration. Unveiled in 1963, Winged Figure is still on the building where it is seen by an estimated 200 million people every year. Hepworth always created full-scale prototypes for her major commissions, though the one for Winged Figure is the largest to survive. It is made of aluminium sheet with a polyester resin added for surface texture, and aluminium rods (steel rods were used for the final version). Hepworth wanted the sculpture to evoke the sense of freedom one feels being airborne or in water. The Hepworth Wakefield holds an impressive selection of Modern British art by names such as Henry Moore, Duncan Grant, Ben Nicholson and Lucy Rie, and sculpture is particularly important at the gallery. Last year it introduced the first biennial Hepworth Prize for Sculpture, whose winner, Helen Marten, went on to win the 2016 Turner Prize.IMAGE: COURTESY OF THE HEPWORTH WAKEFIELDBarbara Hepworth, Prototype for Winged Figure, 1961–3 hepworthwakefield.orgTHE HEPWORTH WAKEFIELD HAS BEEN NAMED AS THE ART FUND’S MUSEUM OF THE YEAR. WE EXPLORE THE STORY BEHIND ONE OF ITS MOST STRIKING EXHIBITSTAKING FLIGHT74NATIONAL TREASUREThe Arts Society ReviewAutumn 2017