Royal Academy's Famous Summer Exhibition Opens June 7th

Written by Lester Crumbworthy Friday, 13 May 2011 22:57

London.- An essential part of the London art calendar, The Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition is the largest open contemporary art exhibition in the world, drawing together a wide range of new and recent work by established, unknown and emerging artists. The exhibition will be on view at the Royal Academy in London from June 7th until August 15th. Royal Academicians Christopher Le Brun and Michael Craig-Martin will play significant roles in developing the main characteristics of this year’s exhibition, whilst Piers Gough and Alan Stanton will shape the architecture room.

This year the Selection Committee has agreed that there will be no theme. They have instead decided that Gallery 3 (the largest in the Academy and traditionally used for the display of work by Royal Academicians and Honorary RAs) will be hung in the style of a ‘salon hang’. This will be a unique presentation of recent and new work of all sizes by both artists from open submission and from the Academicians. The aim is to exploit the grandeur of the Academy’s principal room with a memorably dense and rich visual experience. Taking advantage of all available hanging space, paintings will be hung from the dado rail to the picture rail. The ambition of the Committee is that by the careful arrangement of the hang, each work will be properly seen and ‘read’ in its space, and that the cumulative effect - which will have echoes of Summer Exhibitions of past years - will be to infuse the gallery with life and energy, providing a central focus to the exhibition and contrasting dramatically with other more sparsely-hung rooms. This year the Architecture Room will be located in Gallery VI and the Architecture Members hanging this gallery, Piers Gough RA and Alan Stanton RA, are keen to receive modestly sized works in the usual media – models, drawings and high quality photographs. As in previous years, a major work of sculpture will be presented as part of the Summer Exhibition in the Annenberg Courtyard.


Held annually since the Royal Academy's foundation in 1768, the Summer Exhibition is a unique celebratory showcase for art of all styles and media, encompassing paintings, sculpture, photography, prints, architectural models, film, and artist's books. Historically, the exhibition has also provided an opportunity for Royal Academicians, many of whom are internationally renowned, to show their work. Following long Academy tradition, the exhibition is curated by an annually rotating committee of Royal Academicians who are all practicing artists and architects. Any artist may enter work for selection - over 12,000 works are submitted for consideration every year and around 1200 are exhibited. The Academy works hard to encourage a diverse range of artists to enter and, as a result, well over 100 artists are included every year who have not previously exhibited in the Summer Exhibition.

The show provides an unrivalled opportunity for exhibitors to sell their work and have it seen by the 200,000 visitors that the exhibition draws during its three-month run; all artists are strongly encouraged to enter work that is available for sale. Over £65,000 will be given in prizes; awards include The Charles Wollaston Award for the most distinguished work (£25,000), The Jack Goldhill Award for a sculpture (£10,000), The Hugh Casson Drawing Prize (£3,000), The British Institution Awards for students (4 prizes of £1000), The Rose Award for Photography (£1000), The Sunny Dupree Family Award for a Woman Artist (£3,500) and the Bovis Lend Lease/Architects Journal Awards for Architecture (£15,000 in total). All exhibited works are eligible for the relevant prizes.

The Summer Exhibition was first held in a warehouse on Pall Mall from 1769 to 1779. 136 paintings were exhibited in the 1769 Summer Exhibition, 672 in 1792, and 815 in 1805. The figure exceeded 1,000 in 1820 and reached 1,500 by 1845. In 1822 "Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Gazette after the Battle of Waterloo" by David Wilkie had to be roped off to prevent its being damaged by the 90,000 people who wanted to see it. This happened again in 1858 to protect "Derby Day" by William Powell Frith. J. M. W. Turner painted some of his late masterpieces, including "Rain, Steam and Speed — The Great Western Railway", in the Summer Exhibition itself. An onlooker recalled him 'standing very close up to the canvas, [he] appeared to paint with his eyes and nose as well as his hands'. John Everett Millais first exhibited "Christ in the House of his Parents" in the 1850 Summer Exhibition. The Times described it as 'plainly revolting' and Charles Dickens thought the Christ Child 'a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-haired boy in a nightgown'. Visit the Royal Academy's website at ... http://www.royalacademy.org.uk

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