Behind the scenes: exploring the creative process
Evening session
Tuesday 17 January 2017 6.30 - 8pm
The research library, Burlington House, Royal Academy of Arts
£75. Includes exclusive access to the Academy's teaching collection and a drinks reception and nibbles in the Academicians' Room upon completion.
Terms and conditions
Explore the process of creativity with Annette Wickham, the Royal Academy’s Curator of Works on Paper. Come behind-the-scenes for an exclusive tour of the Royal Academy’s library, focusing on artists' sketch books to examine the creative process within our unique collection.
Taking place in the Royal Academy’s historic library, this session is an opportunity to experience the Academy behind-the-scenes and study works by Royal Academicians and other eminent British artists – including painters, sculptors and architects – dating from the 18th century up to the present day. Their sketches and preparatory studies offer valuable insight into artists’ practices and the decisions that influence the development of a finished work. The viewing will feature prints, drawings, watercolours and sketchbooks by George Romney, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Frederic, Lord Leighton, Dame Laura Knight, Eileen Cooper and Sir Nicholas Grimshaw.
About the tutor
Annette Wickham is Curator of Works on Paper for the Royal Academy Collections. She has curated and contributed to numerous exhibitions at the Academy including John Gibson RA: A British Sculptor in Rome, Daniel Maclise: The Waterloo Cartoon, Drawing: The Lines of Time with Ann Christopher RA, and Constable, Gainsborough and Turner and the Making of Landscape. She has published on these subjects and regularly gives talks and papers focusing on aspects of the history of the Royal Academy, its Collections and its Schools. Annette studied History of Art at Manchester University and the Courtauld Institute and was previously an Assistant Curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where she contributed to two major projects: the British Galleries and the redisplay of the Hereford Cathedral Choir Screen.
In the build-up the RA’s 250th anniversary in 2018, we are digitising 10,000 new items from the Academy’s collection – from works of art to letters and sketches. In this film, we take a look at how these works are chosen and what they can tell us about the history of art practice in the UK.
About the Royal Academy Library
The Royal Academy Library is the oldest institutional fine art library in the country, established in 1768 for the use of the Members of the Academy and its students. It is housed in an evocative, hidden space tucked away next to the Sackler Galleries on the top floor of Burlington House. Entrance is via the Library Print Room which opens onto a the main reading room which is filled with thousands of historic books on art and art theory, architecture, archaeology and much more. This impressive room was once a Victorian sculpture gallery and was redesigned in the late 1980s by the architects Betty and H.T. Cadbury-Brown to hold the Library.
Our courses and classes programme
Our programme of short courses and classes offers the opportunity to explore a range of subjects, led by expert tutors and practising artists.