Artist
Rebecca Salter, the first female President of the Royal Academy of Arts, tells
our Fair & Square podcast the challenges of running the institution during
and after pandemic lockdown, the central role of education and how, having been
rejected herself, she shares artists’ disappointment about missing out on the
iconic Summer Exhibition.
Renowned
as a painter and printmaker, Rebecca – rebecca
salter – Home – was elected as President of the Royal Academy of Arts – https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/
– in 2019, just months before lockdown
“We had
no idea what was going to happen…And of course the Royal Academy, not everybody
knows this, but we don’t get any public money at all. So the minute we closed
our doors, we were losing a million pounds a month and that concentrates the
mind,” she tells our podcast host Adam Batstone.
Rebecca
praises the ‘unsung heroes’ – the Royal Academy Friends – who kept paying
their membership even though they could not visit the RA.
“…we were
sort of crowdfunded by them and they are the people that have kept us going.
And I know a lot of heroes. It’s the unsung heroes,” she says.
Rebecca
says the experience of lockdown meant the RA recognised that the visitors who
came to the actual building in London’s Piccadilly was just one kind of
audience. Now they are looking at how to extend the reach of the RA using
online platforms and content such as video of exhibitions and lectures.
The
educational element of the RA – which goes back to its origin in 1768 –
is Rebecca’s priority particularly when state education’s focus on important
subjects such as maths and science may leave little room for art. She also
stresses that the RA’s education was always free, continues to be free and will
be free into the foreseeable future.
The RA
has a longer term digital strategy to put together materials so teachers in
schools can go online and download materials the RA had produced to use as
teaching material in class.
Rebecca –
who was elected a Royal Academician in 2014 – tells Adam about the
process behind the RA’s famous Summer Exhibition and how she sympathises with
artists whose work is not chosen as she herself submitted work and was not
accepted.
While she
continues her work as an abstract painter Rebecca currently stores her work for
future exhibition as she focuses on the RA, which beyond art and education also
offers visitors cafes and restaurants.
As the
first women president she also highlights that an exhibition this autumn by the
performance artist Marina Abramovich will be the first time in the RA’s history
a woman artist has had an exhibition in the main galleries.
