Get ready to discover your new favourite artist as we head into a summer of colour at the RA. From painting to installation art, you’ll find it all at the Summer Exhibition.
“The Summer Exhibition has never looked so impressive” – The Times
“A bastion of the English cultural summer” – The Telegraph
“It’s the best Summer Exhibition I have seen” – Evening Standard
For 247 years, the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition has offered a snapshot of contemporary art – and this year’s exhibition is a riot of colour, variety and discovery with over 1,100 works spilling out from our galleries.
In the courtyard, visitors are confronted by a towering formation of steel ‘clouds’, created by Royal Academician Conrad Shawcross, before Jim Lambie’s kaleidoscopic stairs lead up to the Main Galleries.
This year, the exhibition is co-ordinated by Michael Craig-Martin RA – a leading artist of his generation and the teacher who nurtured the talents of Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas and Damien Hirst. His distinctive creative vision has resulted in room after room bursting with variety, colour and remarkable new work by leading and emerging artists – all handpicked from over 12,000 entries.
The Summer Exhibition is the world’s oldest open-submission exhibition: its earliest exhibitors included the likes of Reynolds, Constable and Turner. With many works in the exhibition on sale, the show also gives you a chance to own some original art while supporting the historic Royal Academy schools; artwork sales help us to continue the free tuition that we have offered for nearly 250 years.
With everything from painting, printmaking and sculpture through to installation, photography and film, this is a show unlike any other. We hope you’ll join us for a vibrant summer of colour.