ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT

ARTICLE ISSUE ELEVEN / 2018

For the past 250 years, the Royal Academy has formed a vital intersection between art and British society. As it celebrates its anniversary, it looks backwards to celebrate a spectacular history — and forward, to an ambitious future.

In 2018, the Royal Academy of Arts celebrates its 250th anniversary. One of London’s most well-known art institutions, it is also one of the few places in the world that represents artists, hosts public exhibitions and teaches art practice, all under one roof. Every year since its foundation, in celebration of its’ uniquely artist-led identity, the Academy has hosted an annual Summer Exhibition; a show which is open to all artists, regardless of how well known — or not — they are. (In 1968, a young housewife from Walthamshow took this quite literally; she smuggled two of her paintings into the Exhibition without permission, propped them against a wall, and left).

It’s impossible to know what 2018’s Summer Exhibition will offer up. Each year is different, its overall feel shaped by a selection committee — one led, in this anniversary year, by Grayson Perry, and filled out by a roster that includes Allen Jones, Conrad Shawcross, Cornelia Parker, Phyllida Barlow and Piers Gough.

“I want to champion the democracy of the exhibition and show off the diversity of art being made in this moment.”

“Grayson is a good person to be doing it,” Academy chief executive Charles Saumarez Smith explains, “because he’s interested in a broad range of art practice. And he’s against the idea that only a small number of artists should be exhibited and respected. He has an intuitive understanding of the democratic aspects — and also sympathy for the plural democratic aspects of the Summer Exhibition.”

“I want to champion the democracy of the exhibition and show off the diversity of art being made in this moment.” Perry agrees. “I am planning a special ‘Room of Fun’ in a newly built part of the Academy, so the committee may well look favourably on artworks that we find amusing,”

Perry may be responsible for setting the Summer Exhibition’s tone — but Saumarez Smith is responsible for steering the Academy itself through its milestone year, managing the smooth running of a weighty lineup of blockbuster shows (ranging from a historic reassembly of Charles I’s legendary art collection, to exhibitions on painters Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, architect Renzo Piano and the art of Oceania).

He’s been at the institution’s helm since 2007; previously, he’d been director of the National Gallery for six years, and director of the National Portrait Gallery for eight years before that.“It’s more different from a museum than I think I realised when I came here.” he reflects. “From the public perception, people often think of it as an exhibition venue — not so different, in kind and character, from, say, the National Gallery.

“But actually, because it both involves the teaching of art, and is a representative organisation of practitioners, the way it operates and the way it thinks about itself is very different from a conventional government-funded organisation.”

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Exhibition was Britain’s primary forum for viewing contemporary art; over the years, it famously included luminaries like Constable, Turner and Millais. But through the 20th century its centrality diminished, as other art galleries, exhibitions and institutions emerged. But it remains an invaluable record of the changes within the art world over the centuries — a history celebrated in The Great Spectacle, a show which will launch in parallel with Perry’s, and which will explore the history of the Summer Exhibition since 1769.“They will be separate but alongside one another.” Saumarez Smith says.

“Grayson’s will be a version of what we do every year, of being a big democratic exhibition — with his own character changing it, to an extent. ‘The Great Spectacle’ will run in the fine rooms, and will show the entire history of the Summer exhibition, beginning with April 1769.”

“It’s perfectly well known that for a lot of the 20th century, the Academy was regarded as the stronghold of conservative practice.”

““It will include some of our biggest mistakes,” artistic director Tim Marlow explains. “The exhibition is a history of taste and attitudes towards visual culture in Britain. Sometimes the Academy has reflected public taste and other times we have been behind public taste.”

“It’s perfectly well known that for a lot of the 20th century, the Academy was regarded as the stronghold of conservative practice.” Saumarez Smith acknowledges. “And as a result, art historians have not really studied it. But the fact is, it remained a leading space for the exhibition of contemporary art. And I think now, the new generation of art historians are interested in what was there – how did it represent contemporary practice, was it really as conservative as people think it was? We will see.”

As the Academy celebrates its’ history, it will also be looking towards its future. And this year, just in time for the Exhibition’s opening, an ambitious redevelopment project will expose the Academy’s inner workings to the public for the first time. Underpinned by a £12.7 million National Lottery Fund grant, the redevelopment of Burlington House (its home since 1868) has been in the works for most of Saumarez Smith’s tenure; the celebrated architect Sir David Chipperfield, himself an Academician, won the project via competition back in 2008.

The combination of Chipperfield’s vast experience in the redevelopment of historic buildings, together with his focus on the Academy’s learning aspects, were key to his success. “He won the competition with the idea of creating a big, 257 seat day-lit public lecture theatre,” Saumarez Smith explains, “in a space which was originally a lecture theatre. And that’s always been at the heart of the project — to have a big public space where we can have lectures, films, debates, concerts.”

“I’ve always been interested in the way a building project can make an institution adapt what it is, and how it operates. This phase of development will make it much more public facing, and it will reveal aspects of the Academy which have not previously been evident in public. I see the architecture as a visible manifestation of who we are and what we’re about.”

Alongside the event and learning spaces, the new Academy will also have substantially more room for exhibitions. This will maintain its status as a leading contemporary art venue, and also allow more scope to display pieces by its own members. (Upon joining, every new Academician donates what is called a Diploma Work; as a result, over the years, the Academy has accumulated an impressive collection, that ranges from founding member Joshua Reynolds right through to Tracey Emin and Wolfgang Tillmans.)

When it opens, Chipperfield’s project will, in effect, introduce a whole new building — one which will significantly enlarge the site, and provide a second entrance on Burlington Gardens. “How that will change the mood and feel of it as a public institution, where it’s nearly double the size, is still unpredictable.” Saumarez Smith says.

“It’s exciting, but unpredictable. Everyone is a touch anxious about the impact, but intrigued and excited to see what the nature and process of the transformation will be.”

This ambitious redevelopment is scheduled to be completed in May, and will be inaugurated with Tacita Dean’s Landscape — a show mounted in the Academy’s new Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries. Landscape coincides with two other Dean exhibitions, ‘Portrait’ at the National Portrait Gallery and Still Life at the National Gallery. This type of collaboration between institutions is rare — although it does, interestingly, align with Saumarez Smith’s own first memory of the Royal Academy. “I became aware of a big exhibition it did in 1972 called ‘The Age of Neo-Classicism’,” he recalls, “which was done jointly – unusually I think – between the Hayward Gallery, the Royal Academy and the Victoria & Albert Museum.”

The Academy’s choice of Dean for its opening exhibition is an intriguing one. When it opened its doors in 1768, painters Anjelica Kauffman and Mary Moser were the only females amongst the 36 founding members; it would take almost 170 years for the next woman Academician, Laura Knight, to be admitted. The choice of a top contemporary female artist, in a field where women are still under-represented, seems like a conscious effort on the Academy’s part to to address this imbalance.

There would have been a time, of course, when artists like Dean would perhaps have balked at joining the Royal Academy. “The generation of artists in the 1950s generally didn’t want to have anything to do with the Academy,” Saumarez Smith says. “Henry Moore, famously, used to walk on the other side of the Picadilly, in order not to be contaminated.

“My view is that there’s been a long evolution, from the 1960’s onwards, in which it’s become progressively more liberal, and by the 1990’s, many of the leading artists were more than happy to be represented, to become Academicians. In the 1990s, Anish Kapoor became an Academician, Gary Hume became an Academician. And it no longer provoked this sort of anxiety.”

“I think one of the reasons people like and appreciate it is because it’s peer group recognition. It’s not recognition by government, or recognition by art historians, or recognition by the art trade – it’s recognition by fellow artists.”

“Partly because I’m the person who has to invite people and say that they’ve been elected, I’m conscious that often people haven’t necessarily thought about it. They give thought to whether or not they want to be associated with it. And now, the great majority of people agree. And that’s because it is a much more liberal place. I always think of something Michael Craig Martin said; ‘I thought I was joining the establishment, and I discovered I’ve joined the antiestablishment.’”

A key appeal for new Academicians is the institution’s independence. Since its foundation, it’s been privately funded, and has therefor avoided the strings that come with government support. “The orthodoxy is that you can’t run a public institution – an arts institution – without public subsidy,” says Saumarez Smith. “We transgress that, and have done ever since we were founded.

“Rightly or wrongly, we turned it down” he says of government funding offered in the 19th century. “Rightly, because it means we’re independent from government, which gives us the benefits of independence — but in some ways problematically because we don’t have the confidence of public subsidy. The advantage is that we’re more like an American institution, we have to be more entrepreneurial.”

Would the Academy accept public funding if it were offered now? The answer, for Saumarez Smith, would again be no. “The Academicians fiercely defend the idea of independence and autonomy. The reason it was turned down in 1836 was precisely because they wanted it to remain a private institution. That would almost certainly be the case if funding was offered now. Government funding always comes with strings attached.”

“They represent a generation for whom going to art school was freely available to people of talent, and they worry about the fact that that is becoming harder.”

There is also another aspect to the difficult relationship between art and the British government to consider, around schooling and education. “A lot of the Academicians are rightly anxious about some of the things which are, or most particularly, aren’t happening, in art education. That is because of the emphasis on the so-called STEM subjects.” says Saumarez Smith. “There’s a feeling that art and creativity is being squeezed out of the school curriculum. And many of them are anxious about that. Many of them are also anxious about the way that art schools are less well funded, and it’s much, much harder for students to get grants. They represent a generation for whom going to art school was freely available to people of talent, and they worry about the fact that that is becoming harder.”

The Academy does what it can to counter this trend, including lobbying government, offering adult learning opportunities and ensuring that its postgraduate course remains tuition-free. And following May’s launch, the next phase of fundraising and redevelopment will focus on restoring and investing in the Academy’s schools, a small but significant step to countering the financial inaccessibility of art education in the country.

The Academy was born in a time when there was vigorous debate around the nature and context of art in society. ‘His MAJESTY, amidst the dissensions round his throne, does not forget that he is the guardian of the people,’ its founders proclaimed in the winter of 1768, ‘and is ever ready to encourage useful arts and reward merit; for this purpose we find an institution worthy of a British King, a ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS; Himself the Patron, and the directors the most complete artists in the kingdom: In which will be established Schools of Anatomy, Architecture, Painting and Perspective. — Here is a noble spur to knowledge! Every pupil will now become a critic from the first; his taste will be formed, his judgment strengthened, and his faults pointed out; his work will be reviewed, and the imperfections declared.

‘There will be annual exhibitions of their paintings, sculptures and designs, open to all artists of distinguished merit, where they may offer their performances to public view, and acquire the fame and encouragement they deserve.’

250 years later, once again, we’re at a point where the place of art (and of art education in particular) in British life is a contentious topic. But the Royal Academy’s roots maintain its solid foundation in history, while its emphasis on education protects its status as a world-leader in the art academy space. And the unveiling of its latest redevelopment will allow it to open up that debate over the place of art to an even wider audience — and to situate it, once again, at the forefront of the conversation.

By Siobhan Keam for ARTICLE