Royal Academy of Arts

For nearly 40 years, cultural elites branded the late British theoretical physicist as mythical and otherworldly figure.

Stephen Hawking was formally inducted into the Royal Academy in London.

He has since come to be recognized, along with Newton and other giants, as one of the most brilliant physicists of all times.

And some say he is as brilliant as I am.

And that was a feature of Audrey from the age of about 25.

She had a serious nervous breakdown when she was a student at the Royal Academy in London.

And for the rest of her life, which she spent in London, she was very often hospitalised for her mental illness.

She did.

it doesn't still doesn't feel like the end does it does it no

no it has legs i don't know what's going to happen next so if i can just quickly tell you the the london exhibition um the the organizing principle is audrey actually tried in london to organize exhibitions of her work and succeeded in fact in doing one-person shows renting a room taking her stuff sitting there all day getting some people coming and so on and they've done the welcome did amazing research to locate as many of the locations and pictures as possible and they recreated the exhibitions that she did um so there's about six exhibitions which audrey did um in the 1980s and 1990s which if you go to welcome now until january 2027 you can see um set out exactly the same way um and For them, they answered the ethical question of, would Audrey have approved? Well, she would because, in fact, she curated this exhibition because all of the pictures were chosen by her.

the other hand oh go on no no no please please go ahead right on the other hand the sunderland exhibition is all of her early work um that she did when she was uh it's the name of the sunderland exhibition is kitchen sink realism um and it's what she did when she lived in sunderland or when she was a student at the royal academy

okay That is so interesting and I think what's, you know, as you're talking and it's just kind of mind-boggling the amount of effort and respect and kind of creativity that they're trying to, you know, the Welcome House and in Sunderland to really honor this human being, this person who, as you said, was isolated for many, many years and very likely never had the recognition that maybe she wanted or tried to get.

It's so freaking good, and it's in Mayfair.

I love the Royal Academy, so you can go see some beautiful art.

Fortnum & Mason is an amazing – department store.

They have great gifts.

And street photography as well uh of the colorful notting hill and and uh and uh you know which we talk can talk more about but uh yeah night photography is what really got got me started

my hunch has been that your uh your radar as a professional photographer is pretty much always on and that was pretty much confirmed this afternoon you You and I were at the Royal Academy and then we went out onto Piccadilly and suddenly you weren't there.

And I had to look for you and there you were.

You'd spotted something that I'd missed.

So...

Yeah it's very much about practicing and practicing so as you practice more you learn more about your camera that you've got in your hands but you also learn to appreciate those compositions and really get better and better at them.

Yeah, I saw this as well when we were in the Royal Academy, the summer exhibition, and it was one of the biggest rooms, and there were probably about 175 people in that room, and 174 of us were standing up, and I looked around, and where's David? I couldn't find him, and then I really looked, and there you were, about two inches off the ground, with the camera also two inches off the ground.

What was it that you saw? What

On New Bond Street, Lawrence Holofessner's Allies seats Churchill and Roosevelt together on a bench.

Near the Royal Academy's Burlington Gardens entrance, Elizabeth Frink's horse and rider has stood since 2018.

There's even a Banksy.

Banksy's fallen shopper sits high on a wall in Bruton Lane.

This is my first work.

The idea was suggested to me by a very beautiful painting in the Royal Academy, entitled To Err Is Human.

I am sure you remember it.

It created a great deal of interest at the time, because nobody could be quite sure which of the persons in the picture had erred, or in what way." She paused, and a small voice broke in softly.

But for now, I can tell you this.

In 2023, the Royal Academy of Arts in London Yes, one of those academies, elected Marshall as an honorary Royal Academician.

While the field of art history has tended to be organized around individual artists, it's important to remember it hasn't always been that way, and that doesn't reflect the way art is made everywhere in the world.

The myth of the great artist started at a particular time and a particular place, and that had impacts worldwide, ones that continue today.

And they have an incredible partnership with Howard University today.

So really using the arts and their platform to platform young um artist of color um and then i love the royal academy which is like other end of the spectrum in london but they um again it's a smaller museum um but every year they do this thing called the summer exhibition where both like award-winning artists like tracy emmon and I don't know, really famous artists submit, but then like school children submit and then famous curators curate them, the whole collection on themes and everyone, I mean, it's tens of thousands of people go

every day to see the summer exhibition.

So if I think about those two, there's something about they're both small, they're accessible, they really know who they are.