Press Releases

6 boxes

Official statements issued by the Royal Academy press office and distributed by Royal Mail. Many relate to the exhibition programme. Releases can provide advance notice of an exhibition, salient details at a moment nearer to the opening date and sometimes the final performance of the show. Supplementary notices are also sometimes issued on aspects of an exhibition's merchandising and sponsorship. Many other subjects are dealt with through press releases, such as the election of a new President, major capital projects or reconstruction projects and special events of various kind. For the period 1994-2004 the office retained un branded copies of each release, leaving them effectively in a draft form. This was done in order to enable simple printing of each release onto pre-headed paper. The use of "draft" in this catalogue should not be taken to mean that the releases are unfinalised or otherwise different from those posted to the press.

In every case an assumption has been made that the Press Day information packs comprise the primary point of record for information distributed by the press office. Accordingly the contents of this series have been weeded of releases when an equivalent exists in a press pack located within RAA/PRE/2/2. A similar approach has been taken with regard to the period "reminder" releases sent out as an exhibition approaches, only those displaying siginificant alteration in text have been retained.

All published releases were preserved by the press office until 2004, at which point all releases were mailed directly to the archivist on the date of issue. Hardcopy press releases were discontinued in 2018.