TIPS for entries to the 2020 RA Summer Exhibition

This is a longer Guide to the Call for Entries for the 2020 Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. I gave a brief summary of what you need to do in RA Summer Exhibition 2020: Call for Entries (SHORT version)

I used to do a detailed long guide to how to enter but I'm not convinced people read it. (If you want to read last year's take a look at my detailed guide last year (but ignore the 12,000 entries bit- they dropped that without telling anybody!)

This post covers background advice and tips relating:

• The Largest Open Exhibition
• Observations on the Selection and Hanging Committee
• TIPS for Submission
• Photography Matters
• Pricing and Selling 

The VERY Overcrowded Entrance to the Exhibition
left me wondering whether the Health and Safety People has been asked to comment.....

The Largest Open Exhibition

This is the largest open exhibition in the world. A huge number of artworks get hung or displayed in the exhibition.

Consequently the curation is critical to the success of the exhibition.  I confess I really notice the difference each year based on who curated it and who was on the Selection and Hanging Committee. The exhibitions oscillate between marvellous and boring - with quite a lot of tedium and rather too few gems.

Last year was just weird. It felt like the least curated exhibition ever. In the end I was so bored by last year's exhibition that I walked out before the end, did not go back and did not write a blog post about it. I do however have a stack of photos - but I keep reminding myself I only photographed what I liked and not the complete mishmash inbetween.

On the other hand the RA reckons they had their best ever sales last year. I'd like to know whether that best ever relates to number of sales or value of sales. Whichever I suspect a vast number of sales are accounted for by the fine art prints which are often very affordable and popular artworks have many red dots!

See more about Pricing and Selling below.

Sarah Rogers - Sleeping Mouse (not 2019)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for all Printmakers

I very much recommend this exhibition to all those people who are skilled fine art printmakers - particularly those who work in series and sell at affordable prices (under £1,000). 

There are a lot of people who visit and try to buy an artwork from the Summer Exhibition and they invariably, for budget reasons, choose a print.

Take a look at the prints which were exhibited last year - and also take a look at their pricing and don't get silly. Overpriced prints do not sell whereas reasonably priced ones just walk off the walls. I always do a calculation every year in relation to some of the prints of what the value of the print has been in terms of the sales achieved.

For example, the one below - on the day I visited - had netted gross sales (of the framed print @ £560 on display and other unframed original prints @ £450) of £11,380 - and bear in mind it's one of a series of four with different views of London. People do like to collect....

Richmond Park - etching by Mychael Barrett (part of a series)
One of my favourite prints in 2019

I sometimes wonder why the RA don't do a separate shorter exhibition just for the fine art printmakers - but based on the same principles as the Summer Exhibition.  They would sell enormous numbers of prints if they did.

Selection and Hanging Committee 2020: Observations

Archives of British Art and Funding Opportunities at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

On trips around various art websites, I sometimes find some real goldmines of art history. Such as happened today when I came across the Archive Collections associated with British Art on the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art website

[PS The next blog post about the Summer Exhibition will be tomorrow - it's taking rather longer than I expected]

It's a bit of heaven for those who like researching British Art! Thus we have just a few examples....

Art Prizes

• Hunting Art Prize - material relating to the Hunting Art Prizes (HAP) which ran from 1981 to 2005. Spot a young looking Lord Gowrie and Daphne Todd below

Art Critics

• William Packer - relates to William Packer's work as an art critic and includes his copy for published articles of art criticism, mainly prior to editorial intervention.
• Brian Sewell (1931 - 2015) - 70 boxes - which he had organised himself (and I assume "edited")
• articles pertaining to art and the arts (boxlist 1)
• a smaller group of materials concerning his writings on any other subject matter (boxlist 2).
• material covers every other aspect of Sewell’s life, from childhood to death (boxlist 3).

Brian Sewell (1931 – 2015) was a British art historian, author, critic, and media personality. After graduating from the Courtauld Institute of Art, he worked at Christie’s (1957-1967); as an independent dealer (1967-1980), and as a journalist, most notably for the Evening Standard (1984-2015).

Art Historians

• Paul Oppé - 34 boxes of material that reflects his work as an art historian, critic, museum official and art collector

He also inaugurated the study of British drawings as a scholarly pursuit.

• Benedict Nicholson - archive comprises seventeen personal diaries, six folders of correspondence and a small amount of reference and research material.

Lionel Benedict Nicolson (1914–1978) was a British art historian and author. He was the elder son of authors Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West. He was Deputy Surveyor of the King’s Pictures (1939-1947), serving in British Army Intelligence for the duration of the Second World War. He was editor of the Burlington Magazine (1947-1978). 

• Roy Strong - 34 boxes containing research papers relating to Strong's publications and other research

Sir Roy Colin Strong (b.1935) is art historian, museum director, writer and broadcaster and landscape designer. He was Assistant Keeper (1959-1967), then Director (1967-1973) of the National Portrait Gallery and Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum (1974-1987).

Scholarship

The Centre has a Funding Programme which supports scholarship, academic research and the dissemination of knowledge in the field of British art and architectural history from the medieval period to the present. Awards are made twice a year, in Spring and Autumn.

All supported topics must have a historical perspective and all applications must demonstrate that there is a substantial element of British art and/or architectural history to their project.

The next round of funding opportunities close on the 31 January 2020! 

In this round you can apply for:

• Senior Fellowships
• Mid Career Fellowships
• Postdoctoral Fellowships
• Junior Fellowships
• Rome Fellowship
• Terra-PMC Fellowship
• Research Support Grants
• Event Support Grants

This is the Guidance for Individuals.

Where to find The Paul Mellon Centre for British Art

The Paul Mellon Centre for British Art can be found:

• Address: Paul Mellon Centre, 16 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3JA, United Kingdom
• website: https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThePaulMellonCentre/

RA Summer Exhibition 2020: Call for Entries (SHORT version)

The Call for Entries for the Summer Exhibition 2020 at the Royal Academy of Arts was published yesterday - and this post should have been published yesterday as well but instead I was at the dentist having a complicated procedure!

I write a guide to the Summer Exhibition Call for Entries every year. Here is

• This is the summary/short version (today) - for those who don't like long reads and 
• You can read the long version (tomorrow) where I 
• summarise my perspective on the call for entries and 
• highlight all the aspects bits you might miss which might trip you up and waste your entry/money!

Installation view of the Summer Exhibition 2019 at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Photo © Royal Academy of Arts David Parry

Summer Exhibition - The Short Version

1. If you've never entered before I recommend you read the long version too!
2. You NEED TO READ carefully:
• Terms and Conditions
• Instructions for Entering Work
• Guide to Selling
3. Who can enter: any 
• artist living or dead (or their representative)
• artist collaborations
• under your own name or a pseudonym
4. How to enter - and get screened:
• Register for an artist account and sign in (or sign into one you've previously registered)
• Purchase an entry form one or two works, for a fee of £35 per work
• Enter the details and upload digital images of the ORIGINAL artwork as per prescribed image limits
• make sure your price takes account of both commission and VAT due to the RA if a work is sold
• complete application, payment and upload prior to the deadline
5. Deadline for Entries: 23:59 (GMT) on 17 February 2020 
6. Results of Round 1 screening: 12 March- first round (digital images)
7. Account Status re. your Entry moves through:
• Submitted
• Shortlisted OR Not selected
8. Judges invite 4,000 artists to Stage 2 Judging - and to deliver actual work. You are sent an entry pack containing labels and barcodes to affix to it re. delivery of your artwork to the RA.
9. Delivery of shortlisted works 
• Architecture (Models and Wall-Based Works) 5 May 8am-5pm 
• Artist’s Book, Drawing, Mixed Media, Painting, Photograph, Print Wednesday 6 May 8am – 7pm
• Sculpture 7 May 10am-5pm 
10. Results of Round 2 Judging of actual entries: 23 May- final round (shortlisted works)
11. Attend Exhibition Varnishing Day Reception (on your own / no guests) Monday 1 June 2020
12. 2020 Exhibition: 9 June — 16 August 2020
13. Collect unselected artwork by 20 June 2020
14. Handle any sales of your artwork - for duration of exhibition (i.e. why you MUST read the Guide to Selling)
15. Collect exhibited but unsold work - between Saturday 22 August and Friday 11 September 2020. You MUST present the hard copy of the Removal Order issued by the RA to collect work or go home empty handed!

Coming up - The Long Version

Tomorrow I'll be posting the Long Version of the Call for Entries which will include:

• commentary on the Summer Exhibition and reasons why it is/isn't a good idea to submit work to this open exhibition
• observations about the Judges
• tips and details you may miss about the process for entering your artwork into the largest open exhibition in the work.

This is particularly relevant to:

• anybody who has not submitted before
• anybody who is unclear about what ORIGINAL means
• anybody who has not sent artwork to an open exhibition before
• anybody who hasn't spotted that this open exhibition is different when it comes to sales
• any international artist who hasn't spotted to the two major hurdles you must clear if you want artwork accepted for exhibition

Call for Entries: Portrait Artist of the Year 2020 (Season 6)

The deadline for entries for Series 6 of Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year is Friday 7th February 2020.  You have five weeks left to get your entry together.

If you want to enter this very popular art competition you need to be an artist who can cope with producing good portrait paintings in a short amount of time!

This post looks at:

• the benefits of entering this competition and getting selected for a Heat
• the benefits of winning the competition
• the downside for those who enter without doing their research and prep first!
• how to enter

The benefits of entering Portrait Artist of the Year 

The producers are looking for 72 artists to paint across 8 heats

The success of the show depends on the standard of the art produced, so from the outset the programme is a genuine celebration of good art and an intelligent, fascinating examination of the artistic process.

IF YOU GET A PLACE IN THE HEATS

Heats for this particular competition are filmed in March and April 2020. However the programme will not be broadcast until early 2022.

Taking part in a heat means

• being watched by LOTS of people - and gives you the opportunity to raise your profile if you impress those viewing with your portrait (PLUS you might be invited back for a second go)
• facing a challenge you're unlikely to experience ever again
• becoming part of a community of artists who've "got the 'I've been on PAOTY' T-shirt"

....artists who participate report that their experience was not only positive for their career in terms of the exposure, but also thoroughly enjoyable and surprisingly useful for their artistic evolution.

IF YOU WIN

The benefits include

• the chance to win a £10,000 commission for a portrait of a well known figure for a major British institution - to be painted in a fairly short space of time.
• £500 of art materials from Cass Art
• you become a well known name - due to the fact that it's the most popular art programme on television - and there are LOTS of people watching!

LAOTY Call for Entries 2019 from Storyvault Films on Vimeo.

The less wonderful side of entering

You may well come to regret entering IF

• you fancied being on the box so you could tell all your friends about it BUT
• you didn't do your homework (see my reviews of learning points at the bottom of this blog post)
• you didn't practise in advance working to 3 hours (i.e. nobody gets 4 hours!)
• your portrait was an absolute mess and looked really awful
• you find out that:
• being watched by LOTS of people at the Heat is really, really distracting
• the camera teams and production team are more interested in making a television programme than letting you get on without any interruptions - or even sight of the sitter
• having a meltdown because you can't cope / finish on time does not help you OR the other heat participants (although no footage will appear on tv)

Here's how to enter

This is a summary of:

• WHO can enter Portrait Artist of the Year 2020
• PROCESS: how the competition works
• Plus TIPS on how to enhance your entry.

You can also follow Sky Arts’ Twitter and Facebook page for updates.

Who can enter

The Competition is open to all artists – amateur, professional or hobbyists - but there are some restrictions.

We do not cast for characters – instead, our expert judges select participants based purely on the quality of their submission artwork.

They may not cast for characters however the producers really do need to improve their screen out the obvious OTT self-publicists who create with "dramatic effect". There was one such in the 2019 Landscape Artists competition last year and it seriously undermined the credibility of the programme.

How about taking a look at websites before making the final selection? They tell you an awful lot about whether an artist is likely to make a good contribution or prove to be an utter distraction.

You can ONLY enter if YOU are:

• aged 16 or over as at 16th October 2019
• in good health
• have been LEGALLY resident in the UK, Gibraltar, Isle of Man, Channel Islands and Republic of Ireland for AT LEAST one year on 16th October 2019
• the holder of a current valid passport.

You will, upon request, provide the Producer with supporting documentation in order to substantiate this, and will immediately notify the Producer of any change in Your immigration or residential status. Terms and Conditions ‘Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2021’

Those aged who are not yet 18 years old MUST ALSO have parents who provide:

• written agreement to you entering
• written consent to you being filmed prior to filming.
• accompany you at all filming - or send a nominated adult. 

This is NOT a competition where your Mum, your best mate or your spouse can enter you without you knowing! People can help you with the entry process but it must be YOUR ENTRY. 

You are NOT able to enter if you have been a finalist or winner of ANY previous Artist of the Year competition run by Sky Arts (i.e. Portrait or Landscape).

How to enter

Making A Mark - the 20 most popular blog posts in 2019

I've split the 20 most popular blog posts in 2019 between

• those written in 2019
• those written between 2006 and 2018 - which demonstrates just how much traffic some old posts can generate!

All posts are ranked according to the number of page views they generated - which are all in the thousands.  Some of those which have been around for some years get a lot more than those written in 2019 - I guess because they're referenced by various websites.

These posts are - unrelated to art competitions on television. To see these read yesterday's blog post The Most Popular Art Programmes on Television in 2019

Points to note:

• Art Competitions and Open Exhibitions fall in and out of favour
• Blog posts with global appeal with always get a bigger audience than those of interest just to a UK audience
• "How To" posts about matters relating to art are always welcomed - and constantly referenced!

In 2019

I play a little game with myself and try to guess what might be in the top 10 It's surprising what I'd already forgotten - such as the death of Charles Reid or the fire at Notre Dame.....

1. Call for Entries: Portrait Artist of the Year 2020 

Although this is television related it's about the entry to this art competition and hence I'm treating it as any other Call for Entries post. What's so very interesting is that it beat the RA's Summer Exhibition post - and the Call for Entries for the BP Portrait Award 2019 - which says rather a lot!

2. RA Summer Exhibition 2019: Call for 12,000 entries 

+ RA Summer Exhibition 2019 UPDATE + prediction re emphasis of selected work - one post in two parts. Plus it's worth also noting OFFICIAL: No 12,000 cap on entries to RA Summer Exhibition + dates change which is an an update on - and clarification of my original Call for Entries for the Summer Exhibition

3. Owner of Artist Network, Wet Canvas & North Light Books files for Bankruptcy 

I guess a global audience for this one helped a lot. This was major news for artists around the world who used one or more of their activities. I helped a couple of artists who had to file in Court in order to try and get their unpaid royalties for books they'd written for North Light. Plus I ended up names in one of the Court documents which was recording all the authors of books published by North Light!
This is the follow up post F&W Media Bankruptcy Protection UPDATE re SALES of Artist Network, Wet Canvas & North Light Books

4. Selected Artists and statistics - BP Portrait Award 2019

This post is about the artists behind the 44 portraits selected for the BP Portrait Award 2019 Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery

5. About Charlotte Johnson Wahl - artist and mother of Boris

Although a television programme, I'm including it here because it's more like a story about an artist. It's a retrospective of a retrospective exhibition by the woman who is mother of the man who is now Prime Minister - and who has continued to paint every day despite mental health issues and Parkinson's Disease. I watched it again recently and found it very rewarding to watch.

6. 40th BP Portrait Award (2019) Shortlist

This is my Making A Mark analysis of this year's shortlisted portraits - and the artists who created them.

The portraits shortlisted for the BP Portrait Award 2019

7. RIP Charles Reid (1937 - 2019)

I'm sure all of us who were fans of him all have our own memories of "our connections" with Charles Reid - even if we never ever met him. This post was about mine.....

8. Call for Entries: Society of Women Artists Annual Exhibition 2019 

Well done to the Society of Women Artists to be the first 'ordinary' national art society call for entries to be in this TOP 10 list. Women on top!

9. 10 Best Paintings in the Sunday Times Watercolour Exhibition 2019 

The 10 paintings in the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2019 which impressed me. By which I mean

• They caught my eye on my first turn around the gallery - from a distance of some 6 feet+.
• Then kept it on my second go round - when I'm looking more closely at the paintings. 
• Then survived the cull as I went around for the third time to work out my 10 best paintings!

10. The Destruction of Notre Dame - only the stone will remain

Many, many people in Paris and around the world watched as huge flames burst through what was the roof of Notre Dame and then watched it collapse. Both sides of the Seine were also lined with thousands of people watching the fire.

The Destruction of Notre Dame

In addition two of my Blog Pages remain perennially popular. These are:

• Major UK Art Competitions
• UK Art Societies: Open Exhibitions

PAST: posts from previous years (2006-2018)

Posts from previous years - unrelated to art on television - have proved to be perennially popular and some have almost taken on a life of their own!

Note that five of the ten are "how to" posts. If you write a good "how to" post about perennial topics it can be of value and generate traffic for very many years.