C harles Gordon-Lennox, the 11th Duke of Richmond, is an anomaly among his peer group; an innovator and original thinker who, since taking over the reins of Goodwood—his family’s 12,000-acre estate in Sussex, England—from his father in 1994, has catapulted its revenues from £1.9 million to £130 million today. Not 🎃bad for a man who dropped out of Eton at 16.

The tanned and youthful-looking 70-year-old, stylishly dressed in a dark blue double-breasted suit, black “Monk” shoes (they have two buckles), and round-framed tortoiseshell glasses, greets me in the Large Library at Goodwood, where the decorative ceiling was painte🔯d by Charles Reuben Ryley in the late 18th century and over 3,000 mostly French dusty tomes line the shelves. Today, the piano is littered with silver-framed family portraits, a bar is stacked with booze and art magazines cover a large ottoman.

Gordon-Lennox, who has been married to his second wife, the Hon. Janet Astor, for 34 years, and with whom he has four children (he was previously married to Sally Clayton, the mother of his eldest child, Alexandra, 40), installs himself, a cup of Earl Grey in hand, on a damask armchair overlooking a portrait of his foreb♐ear, the fifth Duke of Richmond, while his smiling butler retreats quietly in the background. But that’s where the period drama cliche ends.

The iconoclastic aristocrat—an award-winning photographe💯r, a vintage clothing aficionado and a devoted petrolhead who can’t help but think outside the box—has become known, not just for boosting revenues, but for spearheading slickly delivered annual events. The Goodwood Festival of Speed (one of the biggest motor racing competitions in the world) and the Goodwood Revival, which celebrates the period between 1948-1966 when his grandfather, the ninth Duke of Richmond, first opened a race track on the grounds and where attendees today parade in vintage cars, dressed in the fashion of the day, are both now staples on the British summer social calendar.

This month sees the launch of his most ambitious project yet—the not-for-profit Goodwood Art Foundation, a venture dedicated to creating a world-class contemporary art foundation in a 70-acre woodland. The lot will include a museum, a cafe and an amphitheater, and will open with works by globally renowned Turner Prize-winning꧂ artist, Rachel Whiteread, including her rarely seen photogr♏aphs.

So far, so 21st-century stately home. Grand houses all over England—Blenheim Palace, Chatsworth, Waddesdon and Houghton Hall—have embraced artistic exhibitio🦩ns on their land for decades.

But ꦗlike his father before h🅷im, who set up an environmental educational trust in the 1970s, which is still ongoing, Gordon-Lennox’s ambitions stretch beyond just high-class art. A program for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are increasingly being denied access to art lessons in the curriculum, will be run concurrently in the foundation’s bucolic woodland area.

Considering his inherent artistic bent, I wonder why he’s only coming to this now. “I was inspired by the Cass Sculpture Foundation,” he says of the recently wound down (in 2020) Goodwood-based charitable commissioning body, independently founded by the German-born philanthropist Wilfred Cass and his wife Jeannette in the 1990s. The couple also latterly lived on the estate and used the surrounding land to showcase modern Bri𒈔tish sculptors.

“We’ve always been famous for all these sports—I call them ‘famiꦫly passion streams,’” he s🧸ays. “But we’ve also got a major 18th-century art collection. We thought it was an opportunity to do something exceptional with art but in a unique way, to foster physical and mental well-being, and creativity through engagement with art and a connectedness to nature.”

The collection he refers to includes paintings by Van Dyck, Stubbs, Joshua Reynolds and Canaletto, among others. “We were buying th𓆉e most art when we had the most resources. Then the money ran out,” he says with a shrug. Considering Gordon-Lennox’s penchant for abstract modern photography, it’s curious that contemporary art has not yet figured at Goodwood. Perhaps it has been his way to keep both those worlds separate.

He first fell in love with photograph𓄧y when his father gave him a camera at the age of twelve. When he dropped out of school, he spent a year working for the director Stanley Kubrick on the set of his film, “Barry Lyndon”. He was tasked with taking pre-production images and Kubrick w𝓰ould critique them at the end of each day. “It either had to be the best, or it didn’t work,” he says.

When his year was up, Gor🐠don-Lennox traveled to Africa, capturing images for an education photography project. “It was an important time, and I was the only white guy with long hair,” he says. On his return, he started working for magazines such as Harpers & Queen and Italian Vogue but then pivoted to advertising, where he spent the next 15 years collaborating on some of the biggest campaigns of the day (including Levi’s and Benson & Hedges).

Despite the demands of running Goodwood, he is still an avid photographer in his spare time (his next exhibition will be at London’s Hamilton Gallery in November). I later spotted multiple large monochromatic abst✨ract images of his work when I walked through his studio.

I ask him if he is excited by the foundation. “Yes, I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise,” he replies. ♊“When we do things like this the challenge is to pick them up and make them releva🉐nt for the modern world. I’ve been fortunate to find myself among people who know what they are doing.”

It’s a gift he has shown himself to be particularly adept at. To that end, the foundation has appointed three leaders in their respective fields to develop and run the project🍬: Ann Gallagher (formerly Director of Collections, British Art, at Tate Modern), the award-winning landscape artist, Dan Pearson, and Sally Ba💯con, an arts education specialist, formerly Executive Director of the Clore Duffield Foundation.

“We’ve raised quite a lot of money to do it,” he adds. “Stephen Schwarzman [co-founder 🍃of behomoth private equity group Blackstone] has been quite involved,” he says of the billionaire, after who🅺m the foundation’s garden is named.

The maverick entrepreneur checks his watch and stands up. “So sorry, I’ve got to g♒et on a call,” he says as he walks out of the room where he oft🀅en hosted Queen Elizabeth II for tea when she stayed for the racing.

The butler escorts me to a waiting car, which ferries me to the still-under-cons🌞truction 70-acre Tolkien-esque woodland site where I meet with Richard Grindy, director of the Goodwood Art Foundation, for a site visit. He points to the Pavilion Gallery (originall𝐆y designed by the modernist architect Craig Downie for the Cass family and now upgraded to museum standard).

“✱That’s where Rachel Whiteread will show her work,” he says. I spoke to the curator Ann Gallagher a couple of days later to ask her what had inspired her to choose Whiteread for the foundation’s inaugural show. “Rachel Whiteread has a long history of making work situated both within galleries, as well as urban and 🌺increasingly rural settings,” she said. “She seemed the perfect artist to launch with. Plus it’s wonderful we’ll be showing her photographs too—a rarely exhibited aspect of her work.”

Grindy and I continue on our tour. “The duke is incredibly passionate about art as a therapeutic tool,” he says, pointing out where the classroom “tipi” will sit. “He believes a regular classroom is not always the best way to teach children. T𓃲he duke didn’t enjoy school. He’s always had a desire to learn and engage more.”

We walk along wood chip paths dappled with falling sunlight as Grindy explains how lan🏅dscape architect Dan Pearson has imagined the grounds as 24 seasons. “Every two weeks there will be anot🍌her season, another burst of color: magnolias, then a cherry blossom grove, and the sea beyond the trees.” Hundreds of overturned pots protect the nascent shrubs.

We make our way towards the amph♈itheater, passing sites where works by 2022 Turner Prize winner, the sculptor Veronica Ryan, will be displayed, as well as an installation consisting of 26, five-meter-high panels by the late🧸 Brazilian visual and environmental artist, Hélio Oiticica. “We want to show highly credible artists who are known all over the world. But it’s not just about blockbuster shows.”

Gordon-Lennox had mentioned this earlier as well. “We’re not trying to attract a million people a year, we want everyone to have a good experience. This is not ‘sculpture through the 🐼park,’ it’s a beautiful ancient woodland.” Gallagher concurred: “I am fortunate to have visited many different types of outdoor contemporary art organisations all over the world in my career,” she said. “ꦑIt has been incredibly useful to do so, but Goodwood is not based on any one model. It is entirely unique.”

Grindy and I amble onto the grass-floored amphitheater. “We’ve been working with curator Helen Nisbet who specializes in performance art, and we are opening 𝔉the foundation with a performance from the DJ and musician [Nabihah] Iqbal. She’s a Cambridge graduate, and very creative. A string quartet will accompany her.”

Gordon-Lennox had mentioned during our conversation how keen he was on music. “I love Bob Dylan,” he said. But then he mentioned something surprising. “I like The Last Dinner Party too.” There can’t be many 70-year-olds who cite a female indie rock band that played at Glastonbury last year. Of course, he does.