Living with the Royal Academy: Artistic Ideals and Experiences in Britain, 1768-1848

In 2001, David Solkin’s edited volume and exhibition Art on the Line: the Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House, 1780-1836 offered new and influential approaches to the Academy’s annual exhibitions as events with dynamic implications for artists and their audiences.This conference sets out to extend the lines of enquiry opened up in Art on the Line through a heightened attention to the textures of ar tists’ relationships with the Royal Academy in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century Britain. In particular, it aims to explore the Academy as a lived organism, one whose most effective role was as a reference point towards, around and against which artists organized their relationships with each other and with artistic practice itself.

This two-day event, supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, will feature an international range of speakers, including John Barrell, John Bonehill, Ann Bermingham, Matthew Craske, Rosie Dias, Jason Edwards, Mark Hallett, Iain McCalman, Sarah Monks, Martin Myrone, Martin Postle and Aris Sarafinos.The conference is being organised by John Barrell, Mark Hallett and Sarah Monks of the University of York.