Royal Academy of Arts

The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an independent, privately funded art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London's Mayfair district. Founded in 1768 through a personal act of King George III, it occupies a unique position in British cultural life as an institution led by eminent artists and architects rather than by state appointees. Its purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment, and appreciation of the fine arts through exhibitions, education, and debate. Unlike most major national art institutions in Britain, the RA receives no government funding, operating instead through exhibition revenues, commercial activities, and private support. It combines the functions of a learned society, an art school, and a public exhibition venue, making it one of the most distinctive art institutions in the world.

The origins of the Royal Academy lie in an earlier attempt in 1755 by members of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, principally the sculptor Henry Cheere, to establish an autonomous academy of arts. This effort failed, but the charter drawn up by Cheere was later used as the model for the Royal Academy's founding instrument. The immediate catalyst for the RA's establishment was a dispute within the Society of Artists of Great Britain, from which the architect William Chambers departed after an unsuccessful bid for its presidency. Chambers leveraged his connections to King George III to secure royal patronage and financial support for a new institution.

The Royal Academy of Arts was formally founded on 10 December 1768 through a personal act of the king, with an instrument naming 34 founder members and allowing for a total membership of 40. The painter Joshua Reynolds was appointed its first president, and Francis Milner Newton became its first secretary, a position he held until 1788. Among the founder members were prominent artists including Thomas Gainsborough, Angelica Kauffman, Mary Moser, Benjamin West, and Francesco Bartolozzi. William Hoare and Johann Zoffany were added by the king in 1769.

The Academy's first home was in cramped quarters on Pall Mall, but in 1771 it received temporary accommodation for its library and schools in Old Somerset House. In 1780, it moved to purpose-built apartments in the first completed wing of New Somerset House on the Strand, designed时任 designed by Chambers himself. The Academy relocated to the east wing of the newly completed National Gallery at Trafalgar Square in 1837, but these premises proved too small. In 1868, on its centenary, the Academy moved to Burlington House, Piccadilly, where it remains today.

The first Royal Academy Exhibition of Contemporary Art opened on 25 April 1769, and the annual Summer Exhibition has continued without interruption ever since. During the 19th century, selection for this exhibition represented the primary goal for any aspiring artist, and at its one-shilling admission price it proved enormously popular, attracting half a million visitors in 1800. In 1870, following the cessation of a similar exhibition at the British Institution, the Academy expanded its programme to include an annual loan exhibition of Old Masters.

The Academy dominated British artistic taste throughout the networked 19th century, with its standards shaped by Reynolds's doctrine of "the grand manner" or "the grand style." It also pioneered public art education in Britain, staging the nation's first public lectures on art under Reynolds's direction.

In 2018, the RA marked its 250th anniversary with the completion of a major refurbishment project begun in 2008 under David Chipperfield Architects. The £56 million development, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, opened on 19 May 2018 and included new galleries, a lecture theatre, a public project space for students, and a bridge linking the Burlington House and Burlington Gardens sites. As part of this project, 10,000 works from the RA's collection were digitised and made available online. A further redevelopment of the Collections Gallery at 6 Burlington Gardens, designed to double its floor space, was undertaken in 2026 with completion scheduled for 2027.

The Royal Academy's collection spans 250 years of British art and comprises approximately 935 paintings, 350 sculptures, 700 plaster casts, 25,000 prints and drawings, and 5,000 historic photographs. The collection has been built primarily through the tradition of Diploma Works, whereby every artist and architect elected as a Royal Academician donates an example of their work to the collection. This practice has been maintained since the Academy's founding, creating a unique documentary record of British artistic achievement across centuries.

The collection's strengths lie in its comprehensive representation of Academicians' work, from major figures of the 18th and 19th centuries to contemporary practitioners. It includes significant holdings of works by Joshua Reynolds, Benjamin West, George Romney, Frederic Leighton, Laura Knight, and David Wilkie Wynfield, among many others. The collection also encompasses important teaching materials originally acquired for the RA Schools, including plaster casts after classical sculpture, as well as works acquired simply to inspire future generations of artists. The library, the oldest in Britain devoted to the visual arts, contains approximately 65,000 volumes.

Particularly notable within the collection is the presence of significant works by women artists, reflecting the RA's relatively early admission of female practitioners, Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser having been among the 34 founder members in 1768. The collection is displayed in changing configurations in the Collection Gallery and in new public galleries throughout the RA's buildings.

The most celebrated work in the Royal Academy's collection is the Taddei Tondo, a marble relief by Michelangelo dating from 1504-1506, depicting the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus and John the Baptist. This work, donated by the collector George Beaumont, is considered the jewel of the collection and is housed in a dedicated space in the Sackler Wing.

Among other significant holdings are Sir Thomas Lawrence's Satan Summoning his Legions (1796-1797), his grandest history painting, inspired by Milton's Paradise Lost, and his late self-portrait from around 1820. The collection also includes Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait of William Chambers from around 1780, painted to form a pair with Reynolds's own self-portrait of the same period, in which he presents himself in academic robes with references to Michelangelo and Rembrandt.

Thomas Gainsborough's Romantic Landscape of around 1783 represents his preferred genre, painted for pleasure rather than the portraits that earned his living. Angelica Kauffman's Design from 1778-1780 offers an allegory of artistic practice, depicting a female artist studying classical sculpture, a particularly resonant image given that women were excluded from the life room in the 18th century.

The collection includes the only original sculpture from antiquity in the RA Collection, a work attributed to Timotheus and thought to have been made around 375-350 BC, possibly from the Temple of Asklepios in Greece. The Academy also holds important plaster casts, including copies of the Belvedere Torso and the Laocoön, which served as fundamental teaching tools for generations of British artists.

A spectacular 16th-century copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, thought to have been painted by Giampietrino and possibly Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, both pupils of Leonardo, represents the most accurate record of the original and has contributed to conservation efforts. The RA also holds James Thornhill's 18th-century copies of Raphael's preparatory drawings for the Vatican's Sistine Chapel.

The Royal Academy occupies two adjacent buildings in Piccadilly: Burlington House and 6 Burlington Gardens. Burlington House, the Academy's home since 1868, is a Palladian mansion originally built in the early 18th century for the Earl of Burlington. The building's courtyard arrangement houses the Royal Academy in the main north wing, while the scientific societies, including the Geological Society, the Linnean Society of London, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Royal Astronomical Society, and the Society of Antiquaries of London, occupy the flanking wings. The RA rents Burlington House from the British government.

6 Burlington Gardens, acquired by the Royal Academy in 2001, was originally designed by Sir James Pennethorne as the headquarters of the University of London. It subsequently served as the headquarters of the National Antarctic Expedition, the Civil Service Commission, and the British Museum's Museum of Mankind. The building's elegant gallery spaces were adapted for temporary exhibitions before the major 2018 redevelopment.

The 2018 transformation, designed by David Chipperfield Architects, connected the two buildings and created new facilities including the McAulay Gallery for free displays by contemporary artists, the Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries for major exhibitions focusing on living artists and architects, and the Collection Gallery for rotating displays from the RA's historic holdings. The project also included restoration of 150 sash windows, glazing upgrades to 52 windows, and installation of two large roof lights. The Sackler Galleries, opened in 1991, provide additional exhibition space within the Burlington House complex.

The Royal Academy of Arts is located on Piccadilly in the City of Westminster, in the heart of London's Mayfair district. The institution is open to the public and operates as a charity, receiving no state funding. Its exhibitions, including the annual Summer Exhibition, are major events in London's cultural calendar. Admission policies vary by exhibition, with some displays offered free of charge, including the Collection Gallery and the McAulay Gallery.

The Summer Exhibition, held annually without interruption since 1769, remains open to anyone to participate, whether professional or amateur, and submissions are judged anonymously. Royal Academicians retain the right to exhibit up to six of their own works in this exhibition. The Academy also organises a winter exhibition programme, historically including loan exhibitions of Old Masters since 1870.

Visitor numbers have been substantial, with approximately 1,249,000 visitors in 2019, though this declined to about 622,000 in 2024, reflecting broader challenges in the post-pandemic cultural sector. The institution has faced serious financial pressures, with reports in recent years of potential job cuts due to increasing costs and changing visitor behaviours.

The RA Schools, Britain's oldest art school, continues to offer a three-year postgraduate programme tuition-free, as it has since the Academy's founding, with approximately 60 students currently enrolled. The institution also maintains an active education programme and publishes research through its library and archives, which are accessible to researchers and increasingly available in digitised form online.