Article: Who needs the RA when you can build your own museum? ; Damien Hirst once called the Royal Academy a 'big, fat, stuffy, old, pompous institution'. Now he's been asked to join but he's more interested in turning his stately home into a world-class gallery - even though it could make a serious dent in his [pounds]130m fortune

ONE OF Damien Hirst's friends made a piquant observation when the Evening Standard broke the news yesterday that Hirst had apparently declined an invitation to join the Royal Academy. "He doesn't have time for that kind of thing," the anonymous friend said. "He doesn't need it." Hirst was always a maverick but then so was Tracey Emin, and she saw fit to accept the RA's medal of membership.

So what makes Hirst believe he has no need of the country's most venerable and distinguished artists' institution? The answer may be that Hirst is planning to create one of his own. Hirst is pouring money into restoring Toddington Manor, a Victorian stately home set in a cleft of the Cotswolds in ...

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