Curators' introduction – 'The Great Spectacle'
Friday 22 June 2018 11am - 12pm
The Benjamin West Lecture Theatre, Burlington Gardens, Royal Academy of Arts
£10, £6 concessions.
The Great Spectacle
Curators Professor Mark Hallett and Dr Sarah Turner introduce ‘The Great Spectacle’, exploring 250 years of the Summer Exhibition through key works as they ponder the impact of this iconic annual show on art in Britain and around the world.
The Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition is the world’s longest running annual display of contemporary art, and one of its largest. Ever since 1769, and at a succession of locations ranging from Pall Mall to Piccadilly, the Academy’s exhibition rooms have been crowded for some two months each year with hundreds of paintings and sculptures produced by many of Britain’s leading artists. Over the last 250 years, these spectacular displays of art – dominated by what has become a famously crowded and collage-like arrangement of pictures across the Academy’s walls – have provided thousands of artists with a crucial form of competition, inspiration and publicity, and captured the interest of millions of visitors. The curators will select key works from the exhibition to tell the story of this remarkable history.
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Curators
Mark Hallett is Director of Studies at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London. His many books include the prize-winning Reynolds: Portraiture in Action, 2014. He has also curated or co-curated numerous exhibitions, including Hogarth at Tate Britain in 2007.
Sarah Victoria Turner is Deputy Director for Research at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London. She is also co-editor of the award-winning digital journal British Art Studies, which is co-published with the Yale Center for British Art. She is also Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art.