The Royal Academy of Arts (Burlington House)

The Royal Academy of Arts (Burlington House)

Recently listed as edging the Top Ten of places most visited in the UK, The Royal Academy of Arts at Burlington House has become a prerequisite stop for visitors shopping, supping or staying in hotels in Mayfair.

Established in 1789 by King George III to promote and support art education, exhibitions and artists, it's also cited as and remains the oldest art school in the country. And, in this enviable location since 1868 when it moved from other equally enviable environs the east wing of the then-new National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. Though its clout and location do make it an unlikely destination for would-be Van Goghs to wander into from Piccadilly carrying a paintbrush (or a left ear), its annual, internationally-renowned Summer Exhibition goes a long way to resolve this age-old "art versus patron" paradox.

Held from the middle of June through the middle of August, the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition fills every nook and cranny with "innumerable" pictures and sculpture (with enough empty corners remaining for film and photograpy) as if the whole kit and caboodle had arrived by tidal wave and its subsequent nonstop wave of visitors as if there to meet the need by cleaning it all up meaning, by taking some of it home (many of the works of art are up for sale and bid-upon as spectators browse). Frankly, the actual experience may prove to be far more dizzying for the judges and juries the 2010 edition claimed 11,000 entries. Maybe those busy mid-summer Mayfair hotels are housing more than mere tourists!

Though its prestigious stream of temporary exhibitions keep the place hopping, The Royal Academy's permanent collection boasts Michelangelo's only marble in the country. The shimmering yet unfinished Tondo Taddei dates from about 1503 when the master was almost thirty (another similarily unfinished roundel from this period lies in Florence's Bargello Museum). Central to this enigmatic work is the horizontal Christ (on the lap of his mother) eyeing the older John the Baptist who seems to be emerging from the physical marble in the same way he's emerging into the infant's budding consciousness their futures inseparable in destiny.

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