'The Royal Academy and the National Gallery' - Charles Saumarez Smith Lecture

Date: 26 February 2008

Time: 6.30pm

Venue: Clinical Lecture Theatre, Francis Bancroft Building, Mile End

Details:

The Royal Academy and the National Gallery

Charles Saumarez Smith

The lecture will compare and contrast the origins of two of Britain's leading cultural institutions: the Royal Academy, which emerged from a desire for the professionalisation of the arts in the 1760s, and the National Gallery, which was founded as an initiative of the Tory government in the early 1820s. It will examine the different attitudes to governance between an artist's democracy and a state-run oligarchy and how these organisations reflect different attitudes towards the practice and study of art.

Biography: Charles Saumarez Smith was recently appointed as the Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy after five years as Director of the National Gallery. Before that, he was Director of the National Portrait Gallery and, in 2002, he was Slade Professor at the University of Oxford. He is currently Visiting Professor in the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences here at Queen Mary.

Contact information:

This event has been authorised by the Events office.
Contact tel: 020 7882 5147 or email events@qmul.ac.uk

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