Royal Academy of Arts

The Royal Academy was founded in 1768 by a group of artists under George III, with the portraitist Joshua Reynolds as its first president, to give British art its own school and a place to show. It has been run by artists for artists ever since, one of the few major art institutions that still is.

Since 1868 its home has been Burlington House, a grand mansion off Piccadilly in London. Two things draw people through it. One is the Taddei Tondo, a marble relief of the Virgin and Child carved by Michelangelo around 1505, the only marble sculpture by him in Britain. The other is the Summer Exhibition, held every year without a break since 1769, where anyone can submit and thousands of works are hung frame to frame up to the ceiling.

Membership is capped, and each Academician gives the Academy a work on election, so the building is also a slow record of what British artists thought their best over 250 years.