Royal Academy Of Dramatic Arts

December 22, 2004
A Call for Calm at the Royal Academy of ArtsBy ALAN RIDING
LONDON, Dec. 19 - Sir Nicholas Grimshaw is a man of good cheer, a quality that will no doubt be put to the test in his new position as president of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. In recent months, the 236-year-old institution has been embarrassing itself with a sorry public spectacle of scandals and in-fighting. Now it is Sir Nicholas's job to restore some luster to its name.
"It's clean-sheet time," he said cheerfully shortly after his election on Dec. 14 by the 80-member academy. "We have a chance to make a real fresh start. I'm enormously optimistic."
He brings more than enthusiasm. As a respected architect, best known here for designing the Eurostar terminal at Waterloo Station, Mr. Grimshaw is already more of a public figure than his three predecessors. Further, unlike the artists who make up most of the academy, he knows how to run a business, in his case a 100-member firm with offices in London, New York and Melbourne, Australia.
There is also a vacuum waiting to be filled. The outgoing president, Phillip King, a sculptor, gave health reasons for his early retirement last month, but he had been criticized by 30 academicians for weak leadership. And soon afterward, Lawton Fitt, the academy secretary, or chief administrator, resigned, citing frustration that her attempts to modernize the institution had been blocked.
"I think what the academy needs more than anything at the moment is a period of calm and consolidation, which will ultimately lead us once again to a feeling of joy at being there," Sir Nicholas, 65, said in an informal campaign platform sent to his colleagues before his election.
But what it also needs, he conceded in an interview in his architectural firm's office here, is change. "If we can get the administration working smoothly without interference by the academicians, then we can mobilize the Royal Academy to become a true cultural force," he said.
Yet are the academicians ready for a fresh start?
To describe the Royal Academy as rooted in the past is hardly a slight. It was created in 1768 by George III as an independent body designed to foster the arts and was soon Britain's most important art institution. Its first two presidents were Sir Joshua Reynolds and Benjamin West. John Constable, J. M. W. Turner and William Blake were among the graduates of the academy's schools.
Although its summer exhibition always drew crowds, the academy long served as a kind of gentleman's club for painters, sculptors, engravers and architects of good standing. And like other exclusive London clubs, it was run by its members for its members. This 18th-century governing structure remains unchanged. The problem is that the academy's place in the London art scene has changed beyond recognition.
Unlike major British museums, the Royal Academy receives no government subsidy. Instead, it survives by presenting exhibitions that must compete with those of the Tate, the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Thus, its public image is now defined more by successful shows like "Monet," "Sensation" and "Aztecs" than by the academicians themselves, not least because many high-profile young artists are not members.
This has in turn switched responsibility - but not actual power - for running the academy to its administrators and curators. And frequent power struggles have spawned mismanagement and occasional scandals. Seven years ago, the academy's bursar was jailed for stealing $720,000. This year, the head of the schools - himself an academician - was suspended after $144,000 disappeared without "proper documentation."
David Gordon, a former journalist and news executive who became the academy's secretary in 1998, was among the first to argue that the institution needed professional management. Now director of the Milwaukee Art Museum, Mr. Gordon was forced to resign in 2002 by Mr. King, whom he later described as "completely inadequate." Now, two years later, Ms. Fitt, an American and a former Goldman Sachs partner, is following Mr. Gordon out the door.
"There's a lot of ambiguity about who is responsible for what," she said in an interview with The Independent, the London newspaper. "Authority and accountability don't necessarily match up, and it makes it extra-difficult to move anything forward. I have been repeatedly frustrated in my efforts to make changes, to do some things the academy would benefit from, and finally that frustration told."
Ms. Fitt's position was further undermined when she crossed swords with Norman Rosenthal, the academy's exhibitions secretary for the last 27 years. Although not an academician, Mr. Rosenthal is a much admired, somewhat eccentric and at times irascible curator who in many ways is the public face of the academy (even when he recently appeared in drag at the so-called Alternative Miss World competition). When Ms. Fitt tried to fire him this spring for ignoring her instructions, his friends inside and outside the academy rose up and he stayed.
Mr. Grimshaw expressed sympathy for Ms. Fitt because, in essence, he shares her view that the academy secretary should be more an independent manager and less a servant of the academicians. "Secretary has a quasi-archaic ring about it," he said, "as if you want someone to do your bidding. The job needs to be more like a chief executive who runs a $43 million organization. The academy has to be run like a proper business."
For this to happen, though, the president will have to persuade his colleagues to cede power. "To be honest, I think they have played more of a veto role," Sir Nicholas said, "complaining when things go wrong, rather than playing a positive role. We need to define a new role for the secretary before we advertise for Lawton Fitt's successor."
By implication, this also means redefining the role of the academicians. While 13 belong to an executive council and others sit on committees, most seem far more engaged in their own careers than in the life of the academy. Members include architects like Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, sculptors like Antony Caro and Tony Cragg and painters like David Hockney and Gary Hume, but in practice the academy benefits little from their renown.
Here, then, lies perhaps Mr. Grimshaw's greatest challenge. He wants to rebuild an esprit de corps so that academicians not only become more involved in defining exhibitions and supporting the schools, but also serve as a cultural lobby at a time that Tony Blair's government has begun trimming support for the arts. "The academicians as a body should be a cultural force," he said.
And will this happen? "I'm going to spend the next six months lunching or meeting with all the academicians," he said. "I'm very keen to modernize the institution." He then added with a smile, "Call me in six months to see how I'm doing."
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