Royal Academy Schools
Royal Academy Schools
A school of contemporary fine art that offers up to 17 artists each year the opportunity to participate in an intense three-year programme. We are committed to providing an open, informed and critical environment for the personal and professional development of the artist.
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Founded in 1769, the RA Schools remains independent to this day. This independence allows us to offer a free three-year postgraduate programme with bursary support to facilitate the production of new work. With a maximum of 17 students per year group we are able to tailor our programme to the specific needs of each student, offering time and space to reflect and make. Discussion and debate is fuelled by a variety of lectures, artist talks, group critiques and tutorials given by leading contemporary artists, Royal Academicians, critics, writers and theorists.
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![RA Schools 2017]()
Prospectus
Applications for the Royal Academy Schools 2019 Postgraduate Programme in Contemporary Fine Art are now closed. Check back in the New Year to learn more about the 2020 application deadline.
See our Prospectus for information about the programme, our facilities, and how to apply.
The 2019 entry deadline has now closed
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The Starr Fellowship
Applications are now closed
The Starr Fellowship is a year long fellowship for U.S. nationals with a contemporary art practice. The Fellowship provides a bursary of £26,000 and a studio at the RA Schools, to support the development of the artist’s practice. There will also be opportunities for the artist in residence to contribute to the RA Schools Postgraduate Programme.
The RA Schools programme of academic lectures and talks, workshops, technical facilities and expertise are all available to the Starr Fellow, to support the creation of new works that may form part of a presentation at the RA Schools at the end of the Fellowship. In addition, the RA Collection, Library and Archive are accessible. For more information about the RA Schools and our facilities please see our Prospectus.
The ideal candidate will have an independently established practice, and will have taken part in exhibitions / other projects. The artist will also wish to expand their network in the UK and use the resources at the RA Schools to further their practice. Teaching experience and an MFA or similar is desirable but not essential.
The Starr Foundation
The Starr Fellowship is made possible through the support of the Starr Foundation, which was established in 1955 by Cornelius Vander Starr, an insurance entrepreneur who founded C.V. Starr & Co. and other companies. Later these companies were merged by Starr’s successor Maurice R. Greenberg into what became the American International Group Inc. Mr. Starr, a pioneer of globalisation, set up his first insurance venture in Shanghai in 1919. He died in 1968 at the age of 76, leaving his estate to The Starr Foundation.
![RA Schools student working in studio]()
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![Installation view of work by Julie Born Schwartz in the RA Schools Show 2014]()
Graduates of the RA Schools
Our graduates continue to influence art and culture in the UK and across the world through art practice, education, research, artist led spaces, and collaboration, to name just a few. Follow the link below to see who our graduates are.
We offer our graduates many ways to stay involved with the RA including professional opportunities, events, access to RA exhibitions, the RA Magazine, and much more. If you’re a graduate and you’re not currently in touch, see our Graduates page for more information. We’d love to hear from you.
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RA Schools restoration and renewal
Following the Royal Academy’s successful redevelopment in 2018, architect David Chipperfield RA will turn his attention to the RA Schools.
The RA Schools – founded in 1769 – is the longest established art school in Britain and celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2019. Following the redevelopment of the Royal Academy’s campus in 2018, architect David Chipperfield RA will turn his attention to the RA Schools.
Chipperfield’s plans will reveal the best aspects of the original design, restoring the RA Schools’ historic fabric and renewing the campus with new facilities and contemporary spaces. The project will include restoration of all the historic spaces, including the Life Drawing Room, alongside a new suite of workshops for traditional, contemporary and future technologies. There will be a new entrance, project and ‘crit’ studios, a new RA Schools Library, canteen and bar, and improved access to the RA Schools.
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![RA Schools Studio]()
RA Schools Studio
![The RA East extension © David Chipperfield Architects]()
The RA East extension © David Chipperfield Architects
![The RA Cast Corridor © David Chipperfield Architects]()
The RA Cast Corridor © David Chipperfield Architects
![RA Schools Library © David Chipperfield Architects]()
RA Schools Library © David Chipperfield Architects
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Contact the RA Schools
Get in touch if you have any questions about applying to the RA Schools or the Schools' postgraduate course.
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Past events
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![Stephen Sutcliffe, Untitled]()
RA Schools Public Programme: ‘Screen Memory’
Jim Shaw, Jamian Juliano-Villani and Stephen Sutcliffe discuss their artworks from the exhibition ‘Screen Memory’ at Simon Lee Gallery, curated by the chair of this event, Eoin Donnelly.
Taking its title from the Freudian concept of ‘screen memory’, in which subjective reconstruction conceals a memorial event, the exhibition explores the way in which collective and personal memories are confronted within art.
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![Laura Owens, Untitled]()
Thinking Out Loud
The thoughts of Laura Owens, Albert Oehlen and Andreas Reiter Raabe interpreted by dancer Louis McMiller: an unconventional encounter with three artists and a dancer. This event provided an opportunity to meet great artists and watch them while they are thinking. The Protagonist, artist Andreas Reiter Raabe, aimed to create a situation that was relaxing for the artists and the observer, an atmosphere of free thoughts.
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![Marionettes designed by Franciszka Themerson]()
An Aside to On Stage: RA Schools Public Programme Symposium
RA Schools Spring Symposium 2016 Supported by the David Lean Foundation
Convened by artist Sarah Jones, this one-day symposium brought together lookers and listeners from art and theatre to consider the noise and voices of objects. With speakers including Michael Meschke, Paula Claire, Anna Makrzanowska and Marie de Brugerolle.
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![Julia Wachtel, Time and Again (detail)]()
RA Schools Public Programme: Julia Wachtel in conversation with Oliver Osborne
RA Schools Spring Symposium 2016 Supported by the David Lean Foundation
Following Julia Wachtel’s show at Vilma Gold, the artist returned to London for a rare in-conversation event with RA Schools graduate Oliver Osborne.
Always compelling, Wachtel’s paintings take on the aesthetics of contemporary mass image consumption through a process of observation and montage. Through an in-depth study of her work, she discussed the developing character of her painting from the 1980s to now.
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![Olafur Eliasson Hon RA, The Weather Project]()
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Olafur Eliasson in Conversation with Tim Marlow: The Royal Academy Schools Annual Lecture
Renowned Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson was joined by the RA’s Artistic Director Tim Marlow to discuss his extraordinary architectural projects and works in public spaces over the past 20 years.
Artist Olafur Eliasson’s diverse works – in sculpture, painting, photography, film, and installations – have been exhibited widely throughout the world. Not limited to the confines of the museum and gallery, his practice engages the broader public sphere through architectural projects and interventions in civic space. This event coincided with the publication of Studio Olafur Eliasson: Unspoken Spaces, the first major book and monograph on his architectural projects and works in public spaces around the world.
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![!WAR !Women Art Revolution film poster]()
RA Schools Public Programme: Lynn Hershman Leeson in conversation with Ciara Moloney
RA Schools Autumn Symposium 2015 Supported by the David Lean Foundation
Acclaimed artist and filmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson discussed women in art now, identity and consumerism, examining the first 45 minutes of her 80-minute film !Women Art Revolution (2010). This prizewinning film chronicles the evolution of the feminist art movement in the United States in the context of the 1960s anti-war and civil rights movement. Rare video footage and interviews include Marcia Tucker, Yvonne Rainer, Mike Kelly, Judy Chicago, Martha Rosler and the Guerilla Girls.
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![Frank Stella Hon RA, Inflated Star and Wooden Star]()
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![Frank Stella]()
Frank Stella Hon RA in conversation with Dr David Anfam
RA Schools Annual Lecture 2015 Supported by the David Lean Foundation
In 2015 we welcomed the legendary artist Frank Stella in conversation with Dr David Anfam. Frank Stella began his career with his renowned Black Paintings exhibited at MoMA in 1959 and was elected an Honorary RA in 1993. In 2000 he was the first American to have a dedicated gallery space within the Summer Exhibition. David Anfam is a leading scholar and curator of mid-century American art. His many books and catalogues include studies of Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field Painting and the landmark Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas – A Catalogue Raisonné.
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![Until Recently I Only Had a Voice]()
'Until Recently I Only Had a Voice'
RA Schools Spring Symposium 2015
Supported by the David Lean FoundationOrganised by artists Adham Faramawy and Cécile B. Evans, this day critically examined embodiment, outsourcing, and emotional labour in relation to new technologies: the interfaces we live with and through today.
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![Royal Academician Patrick Caulfield's gravestone at Highgate Cemetery]()
Art (After) Death
RA Schools Spring Lecture
Supported by the David Lean FoundationA one-day outdoor Symposium at Highgate’s East Cemetery with further talks, screenings and performances at Lauderdale House. Featuring: Dr John Troyer, Martin Westwood, Patrick Coyle, Blue Firth, David Lillington, Tom Trevatt, Matt Drage, Holly Slingsby, Jordan Baseman.
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![Vanessa Jackson's studio]()
Vanessa Jackson: Curvature and Common Sense
Vanessa Jackson appears to take the most formal approach to painting, but her use of geometry and its three dimensional function deny the supposed flatness of modernist space. The title of this talk, ‘Curvature and Common Sense’ is an attempt to explore the contradiction of a fully realised space at once pertaining to logic and completeness and uncertainty and unease. The curvature is the deviant from the straight modernist line, whilst making sense in the studio is key to the understanding of representation.
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![Nicolas Bourriaud]()
Nicolas Bourriaud: What is the exform?
RA Schools Autumn Lecture
Supported by the David Lean FoundationNicolas Bourriaud reminds us that since the 19th century, modern art has been an agonistic field. He tells us that what he calls “the exform” is a sign or form seized by exclusionary stakes, cultural, social or political: “From Gustave Courbet’s ‘realism’ to Liam Gillick, the exformal appears as a moving territory suffused by centrifugal forces, the unwanted and the official, mechanisms of rejection and rehabilitation. This duality might still be the core of what we call ‘contemporary art’.”
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![Reading in the Life Drawing Room]()
Reading in the Life Drawing Room
RA Schools Symposium
Supported by the David Lean FoundationWith Lucy Skaer, Angie Keefer, Nina Power, Cally Spooner and Natasha Soobramanien.
This was a one-day symposium dealing with the management of reading. Far from attempting to isolate writing as an autonomous (art) practice, the speakers addressed the linguistic “poiesis” (making) as a model, or common denominator for constructions which may bind artistic practises to other things, places and professions.
Language is a material that “every one who ever has or is or will be living” produces for the same means and ends: we all read, write, speak and listen to maintain the inter-dependency of our various occupations.
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![Chris Kraus]()
Chris Kraus: A Very Literary Confession
RA Schools Annual Lecture
Supported by the David Lean FoundationTheory, fiction, criticism, confession? Chris Kraus’ novels and art essays freely mix genres, moving between high and low culture. At this event, she read from her novels and cultural criticism, and discussed strategies for art writers working today.
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RA Schools 250th Anniversary Dinner and Auction supported by Tileyard Studios
![Tileyard logo]()
