Royal Academy of Arts

Royal Academy of Arts, London. The national art academy of England, founded in 1768. It was first based in Pall Mall, and after moving to Somerset House (1780) and then to the National Gallery's premises in Trafalgar Square (1837), it transferred to its present home in Burlington House, Piccadilly, in 1869. The artists who founded the RA aimed to raise the status of their profession by establishing a sound system of training and expert judgement in the arts and to arrange for the exhibition of works attaining an appropriate standard of excellence. The Academy's annual summer exhibition, to which anyone can submit works, has been held every year since 1769, and the RA Schools have also existed from the beginning. They were unchallenged as Britain's main training ground for artists until the opening of the Slade School in 1871, but by this time the teaching at the RA had become slipshod and out-of-date, based on drawing from plaster casts of antique statues rather than from the live model. A correspondent to The Times in 1886, signing himself an ‘RA Gold Medallist', considered the teaching to be ‘lamentably inefficient … I never met an Academy student who does not say that he stops in the Academy Schools because he cannot leave for Paris. I have never met an Academy student who, having left the Academy Schools for the French, did not strenuously advise others to do the same.’ It was not only the reputation of the Schools but of the Academy as a whole that sank very low at about this time, and it became regarded as the bulwark of orthodox mediocrity in opposition to creative and progressive art.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries other organizations, such as the New English Art Club (1886) and the London Group (1913), were formed to give progressive artists alternative venues at which to show their work. Adventurous work was rarely shown at the Academy's exhibitions (where traditionalism ruled to such an extent that top hats and tail coats were required dress on private view days until 1940), and in the 1930s there were several notable instances of leading artists resigning from the Academy because of outmoded views and taste. In 1935 Sickert (elected a full Academician only the previous year) resigned because the president, Sir William Llewellyn, refused to sign a letter to The Times protesting against the threatened destruction of Epstein's sculptures on the British Medical Association building, and in the same year Stanley Spencer resigned his associateship when two of his paintings were rejected by the hanging committee of the summer exhibition (he did not return until 1950); in 1938 Augustus John similarly left in protest after Wyndham Lewis's portrait of T. S. Eliot was rejected (John rejoined two years later).

After the presidency (1944–9) of Alfred Munnings, who was notorious for his opposition to modern art, the Academy's policy became more liberal, and the gap between official and progressive art narrowed. The Schools, too, have won back some of their former distinction. But something of the reputation for stuffiness continued up to the 1970s, and the Academy's aim at its inception to provide exhibitions of the best contemporary work from year to year has been challenged by commercial galleries and by bodies such as the Arts Council. The RA's annual summer exhibition still remains a popular event, however, and the Academy regularly organizes major loan exhibitions (the first was in 1870). They have included several recent large survey shows of 20th-century art: ‘German Art in the 20th Century’ (1985), ‘British Art in the 20th Century’ (1987), ‘Italian Art in the 20th Century’ (1989), and ‘American Art in the 20th Century’ (1993). In 1997 it staged a highly controversial show called ‘Sensation’ (see AVANT-GARDE).

The presidents of the RA in the 20th century have been: Sir Edward Poynter, 1896–1918; the architect Sir Aston Webb (1849–1930), 1919–24; Sir Frank Dicksee, 1924–8; Sir William Llewellyn, 1928–38; the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869–1944), 1938–44, Sir Alfred Munnings, 1944–9; Sir Gerald Kelly, 1949–54; the architect Sir Albert Richardson (1880–1964), 1954–6; Sir Charles Wheeler, 1956–66; Sir Thomas Monnington, 1966–76; the architect Sir Hugh Casson (1910–99), who was also a watercolourist and illustrator, 1976–84; Sir Roger de Grey, 1984–93; the architect Sir Philip Dowson (1924– ), 1993–9; and Sir Phillip King, 1999– .