School of Genius: A History of the Royal Academy of Arts

by James Fenton

This landmark publication is a meticulously researched and highly illustrated portrait of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, a unique institution that is both museum and art school, and is run entirely by and for artists. With unlimited access to the wonderful archives in the Royal Academy Library, and interviews with members of the Academy, author James Fenton provides a scholarly yet accessible and entertaining history of the institution, whose first president was Sir Joshua Reynolds.

As an objective onlooker, Fenton interweaves colorful Academy characters and intrigues with hard facts, shifts in policy, and changes in direction that anticipate or respond to events of the time. In particular he looks at the Academy over the 20th the storms the Academy has weathered, its successes and failures, and its hopes and plans for the future.

Genres: History

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

James Fenton was born in Lincoln in 1949 and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford where he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry. He has worked as political journalist, drama critic, book reviewer, war correspondent, foreign correspondent and columnist. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was Oxford Professor of Poetry for the period 1994-99. In 2007, Fenton was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.