Renowned British artist Yinka Shonibare RA will co-ordinate the 253rd Summer Exhibition in 2021. The Summer Exhibition Committee members are Royal Academicians Tony Bevan, Vanessa Jackson, Mali Morris, Humphrey Ocean, Eva Rothschild, Bob and Roberta Smith and Emma Stibbon. David Adjaye will curate the Architecture Gallery. The committee will be chaired by the President of the Royal Academy, Rebecca Salter.

The Royal Academy of Arts announced today that Vicky Richardson has been appointed Head of Architecture and Heinz Curator. She replaces Kate Goodwin, who is moving on to new opportunities from the role after 17 years.

4 March 2021

6 January 2021

The Royal Academy of Arts announced this evening on Thursday 3 December 2020 at an online presentation, that Dong Mei and Liu Xiaochuan, of BCKJ Architects, an architectural practice from China, have been awarded the 2020 Royal Academy Dorfman Award, honouring an international talent that represents the future of architecture.

3 November 2020

RA Schools Studios, Weston Studio and The Ronald and Rita McAulay Gallery

The RA Schools Show 2021 will present the work of sixteen contemporary artists graduating from the Royal Academy Schools. Fourteen of the artists are from the class of 2020, as all of the students at the RA Schools were offered the opportunity to do a catch-up year of study due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. For the first time, the exhibition will run alongside a digital platform, a parallel experimental project space that will provide context to the artists’ work and broader practices.

The Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing of Galleries

In May 2021, the Royal Academy of Arts will present Michael Armitage: Paradise Edict. Born in Kenya in 1984, Michael Armitage graduated from the RA Schools in 2010 and now works between Nairobi and London. In his paintings, Armitage reflects on his experiences in Kenya and on current events, while drawing on contemporary East African art and European art history. Bridging artistic traditions, he looks towards the work of Jak Katarikawe, Meek Gichugu and Chelenge van Rampelberg as well as Titian, Francisco de Goya and Paul Gauguin. In his rich and multi-layered narrative paintings, Armitage questions social norms, religious ideology, politics and cultural clichés. The exhibition will include 15 of the artist’s recent large-scale works, alongside a selection of around 35 works by East African artists chosen by Armitage.

Main Galleries (Galleries 2, 3, Central Hall and Lecture Room)

In March 2021, the Royal Academy of Arts will present David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020 comprising a new body of work created by David Hockney RA during a period of intense activity at his home in Normandy, charting the unfolding and progression of spring. The period in which these works were made coincided with the beginning of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, where Hockney, along with the rest of Europe and much of the world, was in a state of lockdown. Faced with an unprecedented and perplexing period, Hockney’s focus on the emergence of spring instead celebrates the natural world and urges people, as he does himself in one of his frequently used phrases, to ‘love life’. This will be the first time the works will be exhibited, opening exactly a year after the works were made.

The Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries

The Royal Academy of Arts will present a landmark exhibition bringing together for the first time the work of acclaimed British artist Tracey Emin RA (b.1963) and the Norwegian Expressionist Edvard Munch (1863-1944), two internationally renowned artists born 100 years apart. Long fascinated and inspired by Edvard Munch’s work, Tracey Emin will choose a selection of his masterpieces to accompany her own works.