Six spots to visit around the RA this summer
Published on 18 July 2023
If you’re visiting our exhibitions this summer why not explore some of our other favourite places around the RA?
1. The RA Café murals
The RA Café in Burlington House is the perfect place to grab a hot drink or enjoy a leisurely lunch, but hungry visitors might not have noticed the mural by Leonard Rosoman RA, Upstairs and Downstairs.
The mural shows visitors to the Summer Exhibition, queueing through the courtyard to climb the staircase to the Main Galleries. Downstairs, RA Schools students are hard at work in the Life Room.
The artworks continue to spark conversation between customers and staff alike, giving you an insight into the history, interest, and passion of Art within all of us.
Jack, Sodexo
2. Standing Woman Arms Folded
The Julia and Hans Rausing Hall runs beneath our Main Galleries and is part of the route which links Burlington House with Burlington Gardens. It’s lined with casts of notable sculptures and anatomical models which were used as teaching aids at the RA Schools.
The most recent work featured is Standing Woman Arms Folded by RA Schools graduate Kira Freije. Produced in 2015, the text-based piece might be seen as a challenge to the figurative casts of women which surround it.
I love walking along the Rausing hallway past the Schools sculptures and plaster casts.
A visitor to the RA
3. David Hockney in the Poster Bar
The buzzy café in our Burlington Gardens building is decorated with exhibition posters from our archive. Look out for vintage Summer Exhibition designs, iconic exhibition posters, and recent favourites.
All the posters on display are available to buy from the RA Shop, so you can browse for your next interior design statement while you sip your barista coffee.
My favourite RA poster from The Poster Bar is David Hockney A Bigger Picture exhibition poster. It is bright, beautiful and immediately draws your eye.
Grace, Company of Cooks
4. Christ's feet
You can see a full-size sixteenth century copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper in our free Collection Gallery.
Christ’s feet are missing from the original Last Supper at Santa Maria delle Grazie, removed in 1652 to make way for a door inserted in to the fresco. However, on our copy his feet are still intact.
Our version of Leonardo’s composition was even lent to restorers in Milan to help with the conservation of the original, although they never added the feet back in!
Treat yourself to a day out at the RA, starting with coffee in the courtyard and then strolling through the building to our Collection Gallery to enjoy portraits of RAs through the years.
Rebecca Salter, President of the Royal Academy
5. The Sound of Silence
Max Boyla’s neon telephone box installation The Sound of Silence has become a favourite photo spot for passersby. The RA Schools graduate created the site-specific work in 2021. It consists of large neon letters, spelling ‘SOS’, which blink on and off to emit SOS in Morse code.
Boyla originally had the idea for the piece during the national lockdown in 2020. “I was thinking of the letters as if they were in a cage, trapped in there”, he says.
When people are struggling, they often find it hard to communicate, to ask for help. The Sound of Silence felt like a reaching out.
Max Boyla, RA Schools graduate
6. A detail of parliament
Come in via our Burlington House entrance, walk around the staircase up to the Main Galleries and turn right to find the Architecture Wall. This 11-meter-high display features small details from buildings designed by architect Academicians.
Keep an eye out for a section from the roof of the parliamentary building Portcullis House, designed by the late Michael Hopkins RA.
Order a coffee from a hole in the wall here, it’s a quieter part of the building to enjoy a sit and a drink.
Visiting us this summer?
Are you visiting the RA this summer? Find out more about our cafés, restaurants and bars, including the José Pizarro restaurant in the Senate Rooms.
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