The Grand Spectacle: 250 Years of the Summer Exhibition

Fascinating exhibition at the Royal Academy looking at the history of the Summer Exhibition to mark the 250th anniversary of the Academy.

 
The handout had a useful timeline and the show was arranged chronologically to match. It was wonderful to see so many pictures in the show which had been in Summer Exhibitions and been much admired or caused consternation and a wealth of archive material. It was also a nice touch that the show was partly set in the John Madejski Fine Rooms as it gave a sense of how the setting for the early shows even though they were in different venues.
 
It was lovely to have both an Angelica Kaufman and a Mary Moser, the two female founding members of the RA but a bit shocking to find the next woman wasn’t until two or three rooms later with a Laura Knight. It was also good to see a picture by Winston Churchill which had submitted under an assumed name.
 
I loved the fact they had got Sargent’s portrait of Henry James which was slashed by a suffragette in 1914 and the portrait of T.S. Eliot by Wyndham Lewis which was rejected by the selection committee leading to the resignation of Augustus John.
 
From recent years it was good to see Cornelia Parker’s “Stolen Thunder” the print of an empty mount with red sale dots on which she resubmits each year with a new mount and maintaining all the previous years red dots. It’s always a touching point in the show.
 
Closed on 19 August 2018

 

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