Goodwood’s new draw? Contemporary art

In the grandly layered Large Library at Goodwood House in West Sussex, Charles Gordon-Lennox is casting his mind back to his earliest memory of his family art collection. “Probably my grandfather telling me that the Canalettos were very valuable – very important, very valuable,” says the dapper Duke of Richmond and Gordon with a grin. Clad in a caramel-coloured suit and wearing a pair of round-framed tortoiseshell glasses, the 70-year-old is in characteristically energetic mood. Another recollection swiftly bubbles up. “There’s a very lovely small Stubbs of a lion and lioness – it’s in the Long Hall, but [my grandparents] had that in their flat in London, in Grosvenor House, and I can remember sleeping under it and being absolutely bloody terrified.”

Except perhaps for those four sweeping Canalettos, art is not the first thing that springs to mind at the mention of Goodwood . The 11,000-acre estate, owned by Gordon-Lennox’s family for more than three centuries, is more often associated with racing. It’s the host of “ Glorious Goodwood ” – the annual five-day horse-racing meet (now officially the Qatar Goodwood Festival) that dates back to 1802 – as well as motorsports events the Festival of Speed and Goodwood Revival .

“Our little mantra is horse racing, motor racing, golf, line-shooting and cricket,” says Gordon-Lennox. “Everything that goes on here is a reflection of various family members’ passions over 350 years.” The more than 20 businesses he oversees range from an organic farm to the Goodwoof dog show – and are successful. In 2023 the group’s turnover was £135.9mn.

But it’s contemporary art that is currently the focus. Gordon-Lennox is gearing up to launch a new venture: the Goodwood Art Foundation, which combines gallery spaces with outdoor installations, and will open with an exhibition by Turner Prize-winner Rachel Whiteread on 31 May.

“The idea of having a major not-for-profit at Goodwood has been on our minds for some time,” says Gordon-Lennox, who has dedicated 70 acres to the project. Swaths of woodland and wildflower meadows, a cherry grove and a chalk quarry are still being planted on my visit. Some 1,000 trees have just arrived, all part of a naturalistic scheme devised by horticulturist and landscape designer Dan Pearson. The Foundation director, Richard Grindy, leads us along the meandering wood-chip pathways from which visitors will enjoy the sculptures now on show.

These include works by Isamu Noguchi and Turner Prize-winner Veronica Ryan; Hélio Oiticica’s Magic Square #3 installation, with its hefty slabs of concrete painted vibrant shades, will be the late artist’s first outdoor sculpture in Europe. In a pretty clearing, Rose Wylie’s Pale-Pink Pineapple/Bomb (2025) part-obscures a parkland landscape, while a sound piece by Scottish artist Susan Philipsz will augment an ancient woodland walk. It’s part of a constantly evolving programme put together with the guidance of curator Ann Gallagher, the former director of collections, British art, at Tate.

“All the work has been located so that it has enough breathing space – and some of the pieces are really quite unexpected,” says Whiteread. The 62-year-old British artist is visiting the estate ahead of installing both outdoor sculptures – including a monumental new cast concrete one – and an indoor exhibition, featuring a series of photographs being shown for the first time.

The site is not entirely new to artistic intervention. It was previously leased to art collectors Wilfred and Jeannette Cass, who established a sculpture park there. “It seemed an obvious area for us to develop,” says Gordon-Lennox. “The Cass [Sculpture] Foundation was a catalyst, but the contemporary art world has been on my mind for a long time, because of personal interest and the collection here.”

The two extant (and now revamped) gallery spaces were both conceived by Studio Downie Architects. The first is a striking yet subtle steel, timber and glass pavilion tucked among the trees. The second is a trapezoid pavilion incorporating ash wood from the estate, first built in 2006. They will be re-inaugurated with exhibitions by Whiteread and New York-based artist Amie Siegel.

A new building – a statement, shimmering silver aluminium structure, again by Studio Downie – links to the wider Goodwood Estate with a café serving food from the onsite organic farm. Meanwhile, a teepee among the trees makes for an atmospheric learning hub. Following in the footsteps of the Goodwood Education Trust (established by Gordon-Lennox’s father in the 1970s) visits and transport to the Foundation will be provided free of charge to the schools that lack the resources to pay. So that “we can be useful especially to young people who need it the most”, says Gordon-Lennox.

Goodwood was purchased in 1697 by the first Duke of Richmond – son of King Charles II and his mistress, Louise de Keroualle, “a sort-of French spy”, says Gordon-Lennox. “In the 18th century, they went on the Grand Tour. They were all passionate about art and buying, collecting stuff – and then they ran out of money, basically. Their vision wildly exceeded their capital.” Nonetheless, the Jacobean house, remodelled with its colonnaded Palladian-style entrance and flint-clad round towers, is home to some 300 paintings, which can be viewed by guided tour.

The Canalettos include an evocative scene of Venice as well as a view across the Thames, captured from Richmond House, the family’s 18th-century London residence. There are sporting scenes by George Stubbs, who in the mid-1700s was something of an artist in residence at Goodwood, and portrait upon portrait by artists including Anthony van Dyck and Joshua Reynolds. Sitting in the Music Room of Goodwood House, Whiteread gestures to the myriad paintings. “I imagine many of them would have been commissioned portraits,” she says of the link between historic houses and contemporary art. “It’s not like it’s a new thing; the commissioning of art and stately homes has always gone hand in hand.”

Placing her sculptures in unlikely and out-of-the-way places is “sort of the dream for me”, the artist says; they have also found homes in California’s Joshua Tree desert and a Norwegian fjord. Back at Goodwood, another two outdoor works – (Untitled) Pair , 1999, “cast originally from two mortuary slabs, so they’re like sealed sarcophagi” and 2012’s Detached II , cast from a shed – are now surrounded by ancient woodland and bluebells.

Country estates have been increasingly opening their gates as indoor-outdoor gallery spaces. In 2009, Bonnington House, near Edinburgh, launched Jupiter Artland, a 120-acre sculpture garden and exhibition space. Since 2015, Houghton Hall in Norfolk has hosted seasonal shows by the likes of James Turrell, Anish Kapoor and Antony Gormley. And in Ireland, Lismore Castle, a home of the Duke of Devonshire, presents contemporary art “to be celebrated as the heritage of the future”, across three venues. “The Goodwood Art Foundation stands as a notable example of this shift,” says Cristina Colomar, a director at Gagosian, which represents Whiteread.

For Gordon-Lennox – himself a passionate photographer and collector of postwar abstract photography , as much as a petrolhead (he’s the president of the British Automobile Racing Club and Patron of the TT Riders Association) – the Foundation is “not ‘sculpture in the park’ like you might expect… It’s a thing in its own right. We’re not trying to make it a stately-home experience. We want to do it very differently.”

The official opening on 31 May is just the beginning. A second planned phase of additions will encompass “more garden, more wildflower meadows, a lake, potentially, a sort of biodiversity area going towards the sea – that’s all part of Dan’s plan”, says Gordon-Lennox. Phase three will feature another gallery, a performance space and a new education centre. “In five years’ time, when it’s really bedded in, it will be absolutely fantastic,” says Whiteread. “It’s going to be a new place to go, to spend an afternoon, and see art in a different way.”