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Royal Academy of Arts (archive)

Hello podcast listeners, you've found our podcast archive! You'll now find all the latest podcasts from the RA on SoundCloud (https://soundcloud.com/royalacademy) , on iTunes (https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/royal-academy-of-arts/id1081046026) or on Spotify (https://podcasters.spotify.com/podcast/5kS3uM6f7AE2ZcbELbv4jy) , where we share conversations with artists, architects and leading creatives.

Royal Academy of Arts

With public space being eroded in our cities and the internet subject to near pervasive surveillance, our panel explore whether spaces of freedom still exist, and if so, where.

Architecture and Freedom season: Spaces of freedom

In this podcast, Reinier de Graaf, partner at OMA, reflects on architecture’s different roles in today’s globalized world.

Architecture and Freedom season: Reinier de Graaf

Tony Fretton and Ellis Woodman discuss the powerful, yet often overlooked contribution of James Gowan to twentieth-century British architecture.

RA Architecture:  Tony Fretton and Ellis Woodman on James Gowan

In this podcast, part of our ‘Architecture and Freedom’ season, newly elected Royal Academician, Farshid Moussavi, discusses architecture’s function as an agent in shaping everyday life.

Architecture and Freedom season: Farshid Moussavi RA

When Liotard travelled to London, his reputation was at its summit. This podcast with curator William Hauptman examines Liotard’s astonishing portrait work while there, his impact on the London art scene and his connections with the Royal Academy between 1773 and 1774.

Jean-Etienne Liotard in London

In this podcast,  Tate conservator Rosie Freemantle and conservation curator Jo Crook discuss the development of the medium of pastel in the 18th century, the medium in which Jean-Etienne Liotard was an expert.

The Evolution and Conservation of Pastel Painting

In this podcast, potter and writer Edmund de Waal and Scottish composer Martin Suckling discuss their recent collaboration, a piece of music played by Aurora Orchestra – and explore the meaning of the colour white across music, poetry and the visual arts.

Edmund de Waal and Aurora Orchestra

In this podcast, our expert panel consider what architecture’s responsibilities should be to the public good and whether it is time for architects to adopt a new code of ethics.

Architecture and Freedom season: Architectural Ethics

In this podcast, two distinguished Royal Academicians discuss what it is to draw, and why the process is so important for their work.

Chris Wilkinson RA and Humphrey Ocean RA discuss drawing

In this podcast, curator MaryAnne Stevens gives an introduction to the work of the artist Jean-Etienne Liotard. Travelling across Europe to Constantinople, patronised by rulers, aristocrats and the professional middle class, Liotard was internationally acclaimed for his mastery of pastel and his unflinching observation of reality, which he brought to his portraits, genre scenes and exceptional trompe l’oeil compositions.

Jean-Etienne Liotard: Pioneer in pastel

In this podcast, art historian Professor Craig Clunas looks at the cultural role of materials in the art of Ai Weiwei.

The Stuff of Chinese Art

Architect and theorist, Patrik Schumacher, considers the various parameters for architectural practice today, in the second lecture of our ‘Architecture and Freedom’ season.

Architecture and Freedom: Patrik Schumacher

In this podcast, architect Niall McLaughlin and landscape architect Kim Wilkie discuss the history of the world and everything in between, as part of our ‘Dialogues’ series.

Dialogues: Niall McLaughlin and Kim Wilkie

In this podcast, curator Philip Tinari and architects Daniel Rosbottom and Simon Hartmann explore Ai Weiwei’s wide-ranging and lesser known Architectural practice.

Ai Weiwei and architecture

In the first lecture in our ‘Architecture and Freedom’ season, German architect, Jürgen Mayer H discusses how architecture can facilitate social interactivity.

Architecture and Freedom season at the RA

In partnership with Pin Drop, the RA hosted an exceptional evening of fiction and storytelling during Ai Weiwei’s landmark exhibition with the highly acclaimed and award-winning author, Will Self.

An evening of short stories with Will Self

This extract from the audioguide for the RA's blockbuster exhibition of the work of Ai Weiwei examines his work 'Fragments' (2005), in which the artist salvaged pillars and beams of “tieli”, Chinese ironwood, from demolished Qing dynasty temples, and worked with carpenters to create a structure of poles with linking arms.

Ai Weiwei audioguide extract

Internationally acclaimed artist William Kentridge joins Tim Marlow, the RA’s Director of Artistic Programmes, to discuss his career and work.

Tim Marlow in conversation with William Kentridge Hon RA

Artists Christian Marclay and Cornelia Parker RA discuss the impact of the ‘readymade’ and the destructive process in art, as seen in the work of Ai Weiwei.

Ai Weiwei: The Readymade and Destruction in Art

Curator Annette Wickham explores the story behind this epic drawing by Daniel Maclise and considers why such a remarkable work has been hidden from public view for almost a century.

An Introduction to ‘Daniel Maclise: The Waterloo Cartoon’

Exhibition curator Adrian Locke introduces the work of Ai Weiwei and explains how the artist has used his art to comment on contemporary Chinese society.

An Introduction to Ai Weiwei

Joseph Cornell has often been referred to as an ‘outsider’ but he was accepted into the art market as a partial Surrealist at a time when the art of the self-taught had no name or definition. If he had been defined as an outsider, would he have had difficulty being accepted into the canon of 20th century art history? How would this definition change our approach to the display, interpretation and market for his work?
This panel discussion considers what the new spaces are for outsider art and what the responsibilities are for those involved in the interpretation, collection, curation and sale of these works within the context of today’s art world.

Joseph Cornell: Outsider artists in the art market

Joseph Cornell is one of the most famous yet mystifying characters in modern American art. Cornell scholar Lynda Roscoe Hartigan explores what recent studies in creativity and cognition have contributed to understanding his distinctive constructions, collages and films.

Joseph Cornell: creativity and the mind

Exhibition curator Sarah Lea introduces ‘Joseph Cornell: Wanderlust’, the first solo exhibition of this artist’s groundbreaking collage and assemblage art in the UK for almost 35 years, and talks about the preparations involved in such an exhibition.

Curator Sarah Lea discusses 'Joseph Cornell: Wanderlust'

Art historian Professor Dawn Ades discusses Joseph Cornell’s relationship with Surrealism, his engagement with the concept of time and the ongoing dialogue in his work between the ephemeral and the eternal.

Joseph Cornell: Surrealism and time

In a keynote debate for the London Festival of Architecture, we debate how creativity can be nurtured and sustained in a global city like London.

RA Architecture: Cultivating Creative Cities

In this podcast, celebrated British artist, Sir Peter Blake CBE, is in conversation with the RA's artistic director Tim Marlow, to discover why the work of Joseph Cornell has fascinated him throughout his career.

Inspired by Joseph Cornell: Peter Blake in conversation with Tim Marlow

Peter Beard_LANDROOM’s project for opening Rainham Marsh to public access received a special mention in the 2014 European Prize for Urban Public Space awards.
To mark the opening of a new exhibition about the prize, this podcast offers an opportunity to hear from Beard and other architects who have been working in Rainham within the context of a strategy to improve the town’s public infrastructure.

Architecture: A river journey from Rainham to the Thames

The RA hosted the inaugural RA and Pin Drop Short Story Award. In this podcast, Stephen Fry narrated the winning story, 'Ms. Featherstone and The Beast' by Bethan Roberts.

RA and Pin Drop Short Story Award with Stephen Fry

Sculptor Conrad Shawcross RA joined writer and Coordinating Chaplain at Nottingham Trent University, Revd Dr Richard Davey to discuss his courtyard installation for this year’s Summer Exhibition, and the way his sculptures explore geometry, philosophy, physics and metaphysics.

Conrad Shawcross RA in conversation

Celebrated artist, influential teacher, Royal Academician and this year’s Summer Exhibition Coordinator, Michael Craig-Martin CBE RA joins Tim Marlow to reflect on his career and discuss some of the ideas and events that have shaped his achievements as an artist and teacher.

Michael Craig-Martin CBE RA in conversation

Eileen Cooper RA discusses with art writer Anna McNay the role of drawing in her practice, and why she considers it to be neither just a preliminary or secondary art form.

Eileen Cooper RA: Drawn from the Imagination

Coinciding with the publication of Catherine Lampert’s ‘Frank Auerbach: Speaking and Painting’, Tim Marlow talks to the painter Frank Auerbach

Frank Auerbach in conversation with Tim Marlow

Listen to Man Booker Prize-winning British author Howard Jacobson speak at the Royal Academy's Annual Dinner 2015. The subject of his talk is art, in all its guises, and what he calls "the urgent necessity of play" - for Jacobson, the heart of the creative act.

Howard Jacobson Annual Dinner Speech 2015

Since the housing crisis, the concept of home ownership has changed beyond recognition. Due to spiralling prices, a significant amount of our young population look forward to a lifetime of renting, while the wealthy buy property for financial investment, rather than actual living. Our eclectic panel of experts addresses these issues from a variety of different perspectives.

Architecture Programme: New Realities of Ownership

Garden cities? Loosen the green belt? With a panel including a surveyor, an academic, an urban design expert and the head of a charity, this talk tackles the issue of where to build new housing. (295850)

The Future of Housing: City, Country, Suburb?

In this event, a range of speakers examine the characteristics of places where people enjoy living and communities thrive, and discuss whether these can be applied in the future. The discussion shies away from abstract theory, in favour of concrete models taken from real life experience. 

Future of Housing: the upsides of good housing

Together with the academic and writer Jacques Gubler, architect Bernard Tschumi discusses the work of his father, Jean Tschumi, an important figure in the Modern Movement. This talk forms part of a series reconsidering forgotten or overlooked figures in the history of architecture.

Forgotten masters: Bernard Tschumi and Jacques Gubler discuss Jean Tschumi

Continuing with our Future of Housing season, a panel of experts discuss how we might design homes that are appropriate and beneficial places to live. Drawing on both politics and aesthetics, this talk interrogates the housing crisis from a social point of view.

The Psychology of Home

Famous for his letter to the then Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, the artist talks about the value of art in the school curriculum and the importance of visual communication since the beginning of civilisation.

Bob and Roberta Smith RA: London Original Print Fair Lecture

Professor Robert Meyrick, co-curator of the RA’s ‘Stanley Anderson’ exhibition, introduces this printmaker, best known for his series of engravings memorialising England’s vanishing rural crafts. 

An Abiding Standard: Introducing the Prints of Stanley Anderson RA

A lecture by Winy Mass, the founder of MVRDV, one of world’s most innovative architectural practices. In this talk, Maas focuses on numerous housing projects, including the just completed Markthal in Rotterdam. He explores how the practice creates housing of consistent ingenuity, warmth and conceptual integrity for a variety of clients all over the world.

RA Architecture programme: Winy Maas

Artist Whitney McVeigh discusses an excerpt of her film-based artwork that asks women at the end of their life to talk about their experience and memories of birth.

"Birth": Origins at the end of life

Curator Edith Devaney explores the RA’s exhibition of Richard Diebenkorn, giving an overview of his career and considers why one of America’s most celebrated 20th century artists hasn’t been shown to a UK audience for more than 20 years.

An Introduction to ‘Richard Diebenkorn’

As the RA celebrated International Women's Day on 8 March, this panel of female artists explores what it is like to be a woman in today’s art world.

How It Looks From Here: Women in Today’s Art World

In this podcast, Professor Lord Richard Harries of Pentregarth, former Bishop of Oxford, speaks to Tim Marlow, Director of Artistic Programmes at the RA about the way modern and contemporary art responds to the visual narratives of Christianity.

Modern Art: Friend or Foe of Religious Iconography?

In this discussion, part of a series of events called ‘The Future of Housing’, a panel considers the effects and implications of the UK’s housing crisis.

Counting the Costs of the Housing Crisis

Gretchen Diebenkorn Grant discusses the life and work of artist Richard Diebenkorn, her father.

Gretchen Diebenkorn Grant on Richard Diebenkorn

In this podcast, a choreographer, an architect and an historian explore how our perception and comprehension of the world is shaped by the body and movement.

Dialogues: Movement and Space

Art historian and curator MaryAnne Stevens explores the impact of Rubens on the Impressionists.

Rubens and the Impressionists

Would Lady Mary really have said that Lady Sybil was "banging on about her new frock", in 1912? British linguist David Crystal discusses his new book, 'Words in Time and Place'.

David Crystal: Words in Time and Place

One of Mexico’s leading architects, Tatiana Bilbao creates buildings of powerful geometry, which connect to their sites and users on both material and emotional levels. In her lecture, Bilbao, discusses a number of recent housing projects and explores the ways her architecture weaves together people and place – whether in the house she designed for Mexican artist, Gabriel Orozco, or in social housing projects for the Mexican government.

Tatiana Bilbao

Nico Van Hout, curator at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, explores the thread of Rubens’s influence through art history.

Rubens, Rembrandt and Watteau

This discussion is part of a series which explores the creative spaces of artist’s studios, looking at the intersection between art and architecture.
David Hills of architectural practice DSDHA discusses with artist and author Edmund de Waal the stunning studio they recently designed for him in south London as a creative backdrop to his evolving work. The studio is the result of a long-running conversation between architect and artist, which includes earlier collaborations on de Waal’s previous studio in Tulse Hill and other architectural commissions.

David Hills and Edmund de Waal in Conversation

Award-winning and best-selling novelist Sebastian Faulks CBE reads a short story selected in response to ‘Rubens and His Legacy: Van Dyck to Cézanne’. In association with Pin Drop.

Short Stories with Sebastian Faulks

This intimate salon explores Allen Jones’s controversial work ‘Chair’ and its changing status as a piece of fine art, an erotic sculpture and an object of attack.

Allen Jones, 'Chair'

This is an extract from the audio guide to 'Richard Diebenkorn', on display in The Sackler Wing until 7 June 2015.

Audio guide extract: Richard Diebenkorn

Exhibition curator Sarah C. Bancroft explores Richard Diebenkorn’s consuming attention to detail and improvisational process that led to his magnificent compositions.

Richard Diebenkorn: A Riotous Calm

Curator Arturo Galansino considers how the exhibition’s themes (violence, power, lust, compassion, elegance and poetry) can help us to understand the influence Rubens had on his fellow artists, up to and including the 20th century.

An Introduction to ‘Rubens and His Legacy’

Curator Amanda Doran introduces this exhibition about the illustrator Charles Stewart (1915–2001), who was haunted by the Victorian novel Uncle Silas for over 40 years.

Charles Stewart: Black and White Gothic

Feminist and academic Professor Germaine Greer, disability rights advocate Dr Tom Shakespeare, artist Grayson Perry and Professor Mary Beard to find out what role visual art plays in creating and communicating body image.

Provocations in Art: Body Image

On 22 December 2014, the Arts Club was the focus of a discussion on the BBC World Service. Anna Nunhofer, Families & Communities Co-ordinator at Royal Academy of Arts, explains how art can inspire marginalised and homeless people.

The RA Arts Club is discussed on the BBC World Service

As part of a series of events on the artist Giovanni Battista Moroni, contemporary portrait painter Jonathan Yeo discusses Moroni's psychological realism in relation to his own work.

Portrait painter Jonathan Yeo discusses Giovanni Battista Moroni

Novelists A. S. Byatt and Lawrence Norfolk venture together into Germany’s dark woods to discover witches, goblins, lost children and treasure.

A.S. Byatt discusses the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm

This panel discussion explores Anselm Kiefer's use of heroic symbols, beginning with his 'Occupations' series from the 1960s.

A panel discussion exploring Anselm Kiefer's use of heroic symbols

An evening lecture in which art critic and historian Jonathan Jones discusses Moroni's 'The Tailor' and offers an interesting interpretation.

Art critic Jonathan Jones discusses Moroni's 'The Tailor'

A free lunchtime lecture in which the curator of 'Giovanni Battista Moroni', Arturo Galansino, offers an insightful introduction to the painter's work.

An Introduction to Giovanni Battista Moroni with curator Arturo Galansino

Painter and Royal Academician Frank Bowling discusses his life and work with Mel Gooding (Art critic and author of the Royal Academy’s monograph on Frank Bowling) and Courtney J. Martin (Assistant Professor of History of Art & Architecture at Brown University and Specialist in 20th Century British Art).

In conversation with Frank Bowling RA

Listen to a sample from the audio guide to the exhibition 'Anselm Kiefer', which is at the Royal Academy until 14 December 2014.

Anselm Kiefer: audio guide extract

Author Lionel Shriver (We Need to Talk about Kevin and Big Brother) reads her short story Vermin. On performing her short stories Shriver says: "When it works i like them better. I like being able to deliver a line well... It's nice to be able to deliver passages in the sprit that i wrote, so that you can hear them as i hear them." In partnership with Pin Drop.

Lionel Shriver reads her short story Vermin

How does artist Anselm Kiefer use mythology, history, literature, philosophy and science in his work? What meanings do lead, straw, fire, earth, and water hold for him? Our exhibition curator uncovers the artist’s world.

Curator Kathleen Soriano on Kiefer's iconography

Venture into the ‘deep dark wood’ of Anselm Kiefer’s paintings to learn why representations of trees and forests feature so often in his work.

‘Once upon a time in a deep dark wood...’ Anselm Kiefer and the German Forest

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rafael Moneo delivers our Annual Architecture Lecture in the inspiring setting of the Summer Exhibition. Moneo is world-renowned for his intellectually and structurally rigourous buildings, such as the Kursaal Congress Centre in San Sebastián, the City Hall in Murcia and the Northwest Corner Building at Columbia University.

Rafael Moneo: Royal Academy Annual Architecture Lecture

The Booker Prize-winning author of 'Waterland' and 'Last Orders' reads from his latest collection 'England and Other Stories'.

Short stories with Graham Swift

Internationally esteemed novelist Tim Winton reads from his collection of short stories 'The Turning'. In partnership with Pin Drop.

Short stories with Tim Winton

We’ve challenged three guest speakers to choose the five works in this year’s Summer Exhibition that intrigue them the most. BBC’s Arts Editor Will Gompertz attempts to narrow down his picks from the plethora of works on display.

Summer Exhibition Edit: Will Gompertz

We’ve challenged three guest speakers to choose the five works in this year’s Summer Exhibition that intrigue them the most. Fashion historian and DJ Amber Jane Butchart guides us through her favourite works.

Summer Exhibition Edit: Amber Jane Butchart

We’ve challenged three guest speakers to choose the five works in this year’s Summer Exhibition that intrigue them the most. Curator Susie Allen guides us through her favourites.

Summer Exhibition Edit: Susie Allen

Listen to a sample from the audio guide to the exhibition 'Radical Geometry: Modern Art of South America from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection'.

An extract from the audio guide to the exhibition 'Radical Geometry'

Curator Susie Allen picks her favourite five works from this year's Summer Exhibition.

With Charles Leadbeater, writer Tessa Jowell MP, former Minister for London Jude Kelly, Artistic Director, Southbank Centre Richard Blakeway, Deputy Mayor for Housing. 

The London Recipe: How Systems and Empathy make the City

A lecture by Dr. Jennifer Sliwka, National Gallery, part of our programme for the 'Renaissance Impressions' exhibition.

Experimentations in Chiaroscuro: Beccafumi’s Prints, Oil Sketches and Marble Intarsia

Exhibition curator Arturo Galansino introduces 'Renaissance Impressions'.

Renaissance Impressions: An Introduction

A short story reading by internationally acclaimed author William Boyd and film, stage and television actor Ed Stoppard. The Royal Academy presents this wonderful and immersive experience in partnership with Pin Drop.

Short Stories with William Boyd and Ed Stoppard

Curator Kate Goodwin explains the process behind the development and creation of this exhibition.

Creating 'Sensing Spaces'

The Royal Academy archive is a treasure trove of fascinating stories about the artists, teachers and students who have been part of our history since the RA's foundation in 1768. Last week the Academy's archivist, Mark Pomeroy, met with RA Schools alumnus and WWII veteran Norman Attwell to discuss the time he spent here as a student. Here Attwell discusses his return to the Schools after the war. https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/ra-magazine/blog/ra-schools-alumnus-norman-attwell,470,BAR.html

RA Schools alumnus Norman Attwell

The Royal Academy archive is a treasure trove of fascinating stories about the artists, teachers and students who have been part of our history since the RA's foundation in 1768. Last week the Academy's archivist, Mark Pomeroy, met with RA Schools alumnus and WWII veteran Norman Attwell to discuss the time he spent here as a student. https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/ra-magazine/blog/ra-schools-alumnus-norman-attwell,470,BAR.html

A talk by Research Curator Annette Wickham recorded in the exhibition 'Constable, Gainsborough, Turner and the Making of Landscape'.

Spotlight talk: Turner's 'Durham Cathedral'

A talk by Head of Collections and Library Nick Savage on Turner's 'Liber Studiorum', recorded in the exhibition 'Constable, Gainsborough, Turner and the Making of Landscape'

Spotlight talk: Turner's 'Liber Studiorum'

A talk by curator Helen Valentine on 'The Leaping Horse' by John Constable RA, from the Royal Academy's exhibition 'Constable, Gainsborough, Turner and the Making of Landscape'