Contemporary art summer school at the Royal Academy
Summer school
12 July 2022 10am - 5pm13 July 2022 10am - 5pm14 July 2022 10am - 5pm15 July 2022 10am - 5pm16 July 2022 10am - 5pm
Wolfson British Academy Room, Burlington Gardens, Royal Academy of Arts
£1,800. Includes all materials, light refreshments each day and drinks receptions throughout the week.
Friends of the RA book first
Summer Exhibition 2022
Terms and conditions
Using the Summer Exhibition as a starting point, immerse yourself in contemporary art through engagement with the artists, curators and business insiders at the heart of the industry.
This week-long summer school will give a comprehensive overview of contemporary art. We will learn about the art being created today through the art and artists of the Summer Exhibition, as well as a host of exciting artists and curators working in London.
You'll be taught through a series of lectures and workshops, including talks, artist’s studio visits, in-conversations, gallery visits and seminars. The course will include introductions to key players in the contemporary art market, both from within the RA and from further afield.
The course will cover:
• What is contemporary art
• How to think and write about art with a critical eye
• How the London art market works and its place on a global stage
• The key institutions and players
• The spaces, venues and arenas engaging with art
• The future of art and the art market
Over five days this course is designed to produce well-rounded arts professionals with a global perspective, who not only understand the language and ideas of contemporary art theory but can also apply those ideas in a variety of real-world contexts.
Course tutor Dr Tim Smith-Laing is a writer and critic based in London. With a PhD from Oxford, Tim taught there extensively, focusing on cultural history and the history and theory of criticism. He is now a regular speaker at the Royal Academy, a book critic at The Daily Telegraph, and writes on art for Apollo, Frieze, and the Literary Review. Since 2013, he has published on subjects ranging from Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Breugel to Two-Tone and The Monkees, as well as teaching for The Latin Programme. He is currently researching the cultural history of luck, and a novel based on the life of eighteenth-century sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt.
Covid-19 update: We are looking forward to welcoming you back in a way that ensures everyone's safety. Numbers will be limited to allow for social distancing, and we will be following the latest government guidelines. In the event of another national lockdown or enforced closure, we reserve the right to move this event online or to a future date.
Please note this course will include some site visits, and as such some walking. If you have any questions or concerns, or would like to discuss any accessibility needs, please contact academic.programmes@royalacademy.org.uk.
Minimum age 18.
£1,800. Includes all materials, light refreshments each day and drinks receptions throughout the week.
Friends of the RA book first
Summer Exhibition 2022
Terms and conditions
About the guest speakers
Alison Acampora is Art Sales and Commercial Content Lead at the RA. Alison works with Royal Academicians and invited artists to develop the most beautiful and compelling art sales and editions programme and experience. She previously worked at the V&A Museum, creatively sourcing and developing own-brand products (defining projects include David Bowie Is: and Barnaby Barford’s ‘The Tower of Babel’), before founding her own consultancy Water Whiskers Presents in 2014.
Tanya Barson is Senior Director (Curator-at-Large) at Hauser & Wirth. She was Chief Curator, MACBA, Barcelona 2016-2021; Curator of International Art, Tate Modern 2007-2016; Exhibitions and Collections Curator, Tate Liverpool 2004-2007; and Assistant Curator, Tate, Millbank, 1997-2004. She has curated important exhibitions of Felix Gonzalez-Torres (2021), Georgia O’Keeffe (2016) and Frida Kahlo (2005) among others, as well as the major thematic exhibition Afro Modern: Journeys Through the Black Atlantic (2010).
Rob and Nick Carter are a husband and wife artistic duo who have been collaborating for over 20 years. The Carter’s work is centered on the boundaries between the analogue and the digital. Their acclaimed Transforming series has been 10 years in the making, and creates a unique intersection between the art of the past and cutting-edge computer-generated imagery. They are the only living artist who have shown work at the Frick, New York, and their work is held in collections including the Mauritshuis, The Hague, Victoria & Albert Museum, London and the Fondation Custodia, Paris.
Jeremy Epstein is cofounder and Director of Edel Assanti, a London based gallery founded in 2010. Edel Assanti works with international artists with an emphasis on interdisciplinary, research-led practices that engage with the complexities of the reality in which they live. Alongside the gallery, Jeremy is the founding Director of London Gallery Weekend, an annual event bringing together 155 of London’s contemporary galleries. Prior to Edel Assanti, Jeremy worked at Gagosian, Fondation Cartier and Tate Modern.
Victoria Gramm is a Specialist in the Post-War and Contemporary department of Christie’s London. Having headed both the Post-War and Contemporary Art Day sale, and First Open, the flagship contemporary online sale, Victoria has organised a number of selling exhibitions at Christie’s, including Off the Wall: Basquiat to Banksy, in April 2021, which explored the history of street art from 1980s New York to millennial Britain; and Expanding Horizons: From European Decorative to Contemporary Arts. She was also instrumental to Christie’s collaboration with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and the artist Stanley Donwood in 2021, presenting an exhibition, accompanying interviews and a musical performance.
Jennifer Higgie is an Australian writer who lives in London. Formerly the editor of Frieze magazine, her latest book, The Mirror & The Palette: Rebellion, Resilience and Resistance: 500 Years of Women’s Self Portraits is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. She is currently working on a book about women, art and the spirit world. She also writes screenplays.
Kabir Jhala is a journalist and Associate Editor at The Art Newspaper. Kabir’s writing covers the visual culture and heritage of South Asia and its diaspora, the global art market and exhibitions. He has written on the 2021 Turner Prize shortlist of art collectives and the curation of Documenta 15.
Sahar Bano Malik is the Art Executive for the House of St Barnabas, and leads on the curatorial narrative of the temporary exhibitions, as well as managing the prestigious permanent collection including works by Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and Banksy. Sahar is first and foremost a visual artist; her practice is political, exploring her own identity as well as how art can make a difference and promote equality across race, gender and religion. She has also worked as a creative producer for immersive experiences, for The Haramacy Festival and with The Foundling Museum.
Thomas Marks is a writer and art critic. He is currently an Associate Fellow at the Warburg Institute, London, where he is researching Elizabeth David's collection of historical cookery books, and was Editor of Apollo art magazine from 2013–21. He has contributed to numerous publications, among them Prospect, Literary Review and the TLS, and continues to write a monthly column for Apollo about the relationship between art and food. He is a trustee of Art UK, the cultural education charity that exists to democratise the UK's public art through digitisation and storytelling.
Hammad Nasar is a curator, researcher, and strategic advisor. His most recent curated/co-curated exhibitions include Turner Prize (2021) and British Art Show 9 (2021-22). He is presently Senior Research Fellow, Paul Mellon Centre and Lead Curator, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum (Coventry). Earlier, he was Executive Director of the Stuart Hall Foundation, London; Head of Research & Programmes at Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; and, co-founder of Green Cardamom, London.
Alona Pardo is a curator at Barbican Art Gallery, where she has curated most recently Masculinities: Liberation through Photography (2020); Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins (2018), Vanessa Winship: And Time Folds (2018), Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing (2018); Trevor Paglen: From ‘Apple’ to ‘Anomaly’ (2019) and Richard Mosse: Incoming (2017). She lectures at Royal College of Art, London; ECAL, Lausanne, Switzerland and London College of Communication and has contributed to magazines, catalogues and artist books on the work of Eddie Peake, Yto Barrada and Noemie Goudal.
James Parry is a writer and consultant specialising in art, history and heritage. After training as a conservation officer with English Heritage, he worked for the British Council in East Africa and the Middle East, before studying a Masters in Architecture and joining the National Trust’s academic publishing programme. He has been consultant editor to Dubai-based art magazine Canvas since its inception in 2003. His books include Orientalist Lives, a study of Western artists depicting the Middle East, which won the American Publishers’ Association Art History Award for 2019; a history of Sudeley Castle (2021); and an architectural account of historic Jeddah in Saudi Arabia (2022).
Dr Jennifer Powell is Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Royal Academy. She previously worked as a Curator at Tate Britain and the V&A, and most recently was Head of Collections, Exhibitions and Research at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge. Jennifer has lectured in the Department of History of Art at the University of Cambridge since 2013 where she teaches on modern and contemporary art and supervises postgraduates. She also lectures for Sotheby's Institute of Art on its exhibition modules. Jennifer has published widely on modern and contemporary sculpture.
Elizabeth Price makes immersive video installations, which feature diverse historical materials including film and video, documents, plans, photographs and popular music. She has had solo exhibitions at Artangel, London; Tate Britain, UK; Chicago Institute of Art, USA; Julia Stoschek Foundation, Dusseldorf; Index Gallery, Stockholm, and the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid. In 2012 she won the Turner Prize for her solo exhibition, ‘Here’, at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead. Price’s upcoming exhibition at the Hunterian Gallery, Glasgow will open later this year.
Susie Stirling is Partnerships and Art Manager at the House of St Barnabas. She has more than ten years’ experience across arts and fundraising, including managing corporate membership and large-scale exhibition sponsorship at the Imperial War Museum. This included acquisition and account management of funders for the new Second World War and Holocaust Galleries, as well as for the ambitious Refugees season of exhibitions, exploring the history of displacement from 1917 to the present day.
Dr Marie Tavinor is Programme Director in the Executive Master in Cultural Leadership at the RA. She specialises in the history of collecting and the history of the art market. Her research has focussed on the development of collections in the 19th and early 20th century and she wrote her PhD on the early years of the Venice Biennale, 1895-1914 (Royal Holloway, University of London). She also has an MA in Art History from the University of Warwick and an MA in English from the University of Rennes (France). Marie has explored key areas of the art and culture sectors: museums (Louvre, Victoria and Albert Museum), dealers, auction houses (Sotheby’s, Christie’s), and cultural organisation (UNESCO). Marie was recently elected Co-Chair of the international Society for the History of Collecting.
Adam Waterton has been working with the RA’s libraries for over 20 years. He oversaw the digitisation and cataloguing of the Royal Academy’s collection of painting, sculpture, prints, drawings, historic photographs, books and archives. Adam is now Head of Library Services, with overall responsibility for the care and conservation of the RA’s historic library collections, as well as modern book collections and online resources.
Stephanie Wickenden specialises in Intellectual Property, Art and Media law. Her background in art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, combined with her expertise in IP, commercial and private international law, means she is uniquely placed to advise clients across a broad range of contentious or non-contentious matters relating to art and cultural property. She has appeared before the CJEU (General Court), Court of Appeal, High Court and IPEC as well as in registry proceedings before the UK IPO and EUIPO.
Our courses and classes programme
Our varied programme of short courses and classes provides an opportunity to explore subjects ranging from life drawing to the history of exhibitions and arts management, led by expert tutors and practising artists. These courses introduce traditional art-making processes, as well as perspectives on art history, theory and business.
Give this course as a gift
All of our courses can be purchased as a gift for a friend or family member – giving the gift of education and a remarkable experience. To arrange a personalised Gift Voucher, please contact the Academic Programmes Team by emailing academicprogrammes@royalacademy.org.uk
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