Date for your diary

Winding River - William Steiger (USA) 1997 exhibition

And when I say “date” I mean it in both the calendar and the “let’s meet” sense.

The Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition opens on 7th June and runs till 15th August. It’s described (admittedly by the RA itself) as:

An essential part of the London art calendar, The Royal Academy‘s Summer Exhibition is the largest open contemporary art exhibition in the world, drawing together a wide range of new and recent work by established, unknown and emerging artists.

If that sounds good to you, dear Reader, and you’ll be in London, perhaps we can go together?

I’m a “Friend” of the RA, which means I get in free and can sneak my mates in free with me. I try not to miss the Friends’ preview days for the Summer Exhibition, which this year are the 4th, 5th and 6th June.

You cannot fail to be enthralled with something there – painting, sculpture, architectural drawings or models.

David Hockney, Bigger Trees Near Warter

I go without any preconceptions – there’s so much that’s new – but I’ll be happy to see any islands  by Norman Ackroyd or any canyons or trees by David Hockney.

Still hesitating? Have a look at this gorilla made from coat hangers, or this sexy, funny, explosive, waxy, resinous, twisting redness.

You might end up also becoming an RA Friend, about which Stephen Fry says:

I do not think there is a more pleasurable or fulfilling thing to be than a Friend of the Royal Academy. I am passionate about the Royal Academy and think it stands for all the very best in British cultural life. There is nowhere else like it on earth.

I think he’s in love. But then perhaps I am a little too. Shall we make it a threesome?