In 2017, the number of Friends passed the 100,000 mark. To celebrate this, and the scheme’s 40th anniversary, we asked members what being a Friend has meant to them.

Rebecca Hunter, friend for one year

Rebecca’s first impression of the RA, from a visit with her aunt a few years ago, is still fresh in her mind. “I was blown away by the architecture: you walk into the courtyard, and you realise it’s not just an incredible place to enjoy artwork but it’s also an incredible building as well.” She had always meant to return, and so after graduating and moving to London for work she signed up as a Friend in May. “I’d probably describe myself as a culture vulture. So I love anything where I can learn and develop and experience different things.”

For someone who is fairly new to London, the RA and in particular the Keeper’s House have been welcome hideaways from the hustle and bustle. “I love the garden – when you’re in Soho you can escape the tourists and go for a drink. I always bring my family here when they come up from Cheshire because it feels really secret.” The highlights of her first few months as a Friend have included the David Hockney RA show, a chocolate and wine tasting evening, and enjoying art with a glass of champagne in hand at the Summer Exhibition Friends Preview evening. “It’s not often you get to do that in a gallery.”

This year, the number of Friends passed the 100,000 mark. To celebrate this, and the scheme’s 40th anniversary, we asked members what being a Friend has meant to them.

Lynne Nesbit, Friend for 40 years

“There was a bit about me that really enjoyed sailing through the doors past the queues,” says Lynne, recalling what it felt like to be one of the first ever Friends. “And then sinking into those leather sofas in the Friends Room and just feeling part of something very gracious and uplifting. But there was a sense of commitment as well – I wasn’t just popping in.” Lynne has been a Friend for the 40 years that the scheme has been running, and, although she regrets the demise of the Friends Room sofas, she has been to “almost every exhibition”. These include many that, as a great lover of the Impressionists, she might never have chosen to see if she hadn’t been able to “waltz in” – the Anish Kapoor show and most recently Abstract Expressionism.

But while in some ways the RA has been her “London club”, it’s much more than that. “The Academy elevates one’s consciousness, because you’re taken out of your mundane world into something that is higher. And that is something that everybody needs.” She feels so strongly that she has left a gift to the RA in her will. “It’s so important to make sure that this great institution carries on, because it’s an academy. Being a Friend, I know I’m also supporting living artists.”

This year, the number of Friends passed the 100,000 mark. To celebrate this, and the scheme’s 40th anniversary, we asked members what being a Friend has meant to them.

Dee Oteng, Friend for 7 years

One of Dee’s memorable moments at the RA was when she went to the Summer Exhibition. “I was looking at a painting and the person behind me shouted ‘It’s mine!‘” And it was the artist, who was crying because he was so overwhelmed that his piece had been selected. He was an engineer by profession who had been made redundant and his wife was supporting him while he lived his dream of being an artist. I felt so happy for him. If mine was selected I’d probably cry as well.”

Although Dee has a degree in art history and philosophy, the RA for her is about such experiences, as well as getting up close with the artwork itself. Being a Friend allows her to see exhibitions with fewer people around, to experience the works in a more intimate way. She also visits shows at least once by herself to absorb them without anyone asking her questions. After that, she’ll often take her friend Becky, an art teacher. “We have the same kind of pace around a show. I learn from her, she learns from me.” She rates Sensation as her favourite show, but still looks back on 2009, when she first became a Friend, as a golden year. “I saw the Summer Exhibition, then Anish Kapoor, then Van Gogh. I visited every single show about four times.”

This year, the number of Friends passed the 100,000 mark. To celebrate this, and the scheme’s 40th anniversary, we asked members what being a Friend has meant to them.

Fionagh Green, Friend for ten years

For Fionagh Green, an early experience of learning to paint was formative in a journey to becoming an art lover and eventually a Friend of the RA: “I had lessons from the watercolourist Michael Chaplin, but I think I told him I was his worst ever pupil and he didn’t argue! I think in a way that made me appreciate good art.”

Now, as a long-time Friend of the RA, Green finds the Academy an oasis: “I used to come up to London for work and would visit the RA. There was the beauty of the building and the art was challenging, and the tea was good too.”

For Fionagh, as well as the memories of good times, such as dancing to the Kaiser Chiefs at the Summer Exhibition Preview Party, her time as a Friend is about the feeling of being lost in the moment in front of a picture. It is also the intimacy of an artist-run institution that appeals. She remembers sitting on the floor listening to a talk by Yinka Shonibare RA and being struck by his enthusiasm and the experience of meeting him in person. “The RA’s really good at opening your eyes to different things. I always thought that I was more a Pre-Raphaelite than a Hans Hofmann, but I’m not so sure now.”

This year, the number of Friends passed the 100,000 mark. To celebrate this, and the scheme’s 40th anniversary, we asked members what being a Friend has meant to them.

Jason Leech, Friend for 12 years

Jason Leech’s affection for the Royal Academy was sparked during sixth-form visits while studying his General Studies course. But he’d been coming since he was 13. “And at some point I decided that the RA was no longer a passing acquaintance, because I was spending so much time here.”

“It is a friendship in every single sense, and we’ve been together for more than ten years,” he says. “The RA actually tells a story and brings the audience into the exhibition, explaining why it has chosen to show what you’ve chosen to see.” One of the most important functions of the Academy, he thinks, is how its educational work reaches out to people no matter their origins, echoing his own ideals. For Jason, however, the most distinctive part of the RA’s programme, and something he never misses, is the Summer Exhibition. “It’s contemporary, of the present, and created by the institution itself. I think that is unique, and enchanting.”