The Times of London profiles Lord Jacob Rothschild and his plan to turn Waddesdon, the last of the Rothschild homes in the UK, into a Contemporary Art attraction:

We are to meet in the Waddesdon Dairy — not, of course, a cowshed but a beautifully designed suite of offices with artworks and magnums of Rothschild wines on casual display. I am greeted by a succession of elegant women — secretary, press officer, curator — before reaching Lord Rothschild in his inner sanctum. Tall, thin, stooping, aged 73, he seems at first — but not for long — to be too diffident and wuffly to be the great Establishment fixer he is always supposed to be. There is hardly an arts or heritage pie in the country that doesn’t have Lord Rothschild’s finger in it. When the National Gallery wanted to build a controversial extension, when the National Lottery set up a heritage fund, when Spencer House needed restoring or Somerset House reviving, Lord Rothschild was the man to do it. […]

So — Waddesdon. The point about Waddesdon, he explains, is it’s the lone survivor of “le style Rothschild” and he is determined to preserve it. “My family built, I think, 42 houses in the 19th century, in Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, the Czech Republic and here. The only one that’s still intact and open to the public is Waddesdon. I mean there are other Rothschild houses — there’s one in Geneva, which has a very important collection, but it’s not open to the public, and there’s one in France my cousin Guy gave to the University of Paris, but there’s nothing in it now; it’s used as a film set. So it’s tremendously important that Waddesdon should survive in a different form of glory.”

He wants to attract more visitors but can’t let more than 100,000 a year into the house because it would damage the collections. So he plans to develop more attractions in the grounds and has converted the coach house into a gallery to show contemporary art.Continue Reading