The Royal Academy of Arts is one of the major tourist attractions in the UK, noted for such showcase headlines as 1999’s Monet in the 20th Century, which attracted over 800,000 visitors, making it the most successful Impressionist exhibition in the world and the largest art event in the UK. As the oldest Fine Arts institution and library in the UK, the Academy has a long history as a centre of artistic excellence. Its exhibitions, including a permanent collection, attract more than one million people each year.

The collection of the Academy focuses on British art and artists dating from the 18th Century to the present day. Its sculptures and paintings include major works by Turner, Constable, Reynolds, Gainsborough, AlmTadema, Flaxman, Waterhouse, Millais, Leighton, Sargent, Spencer and Hockney. The collection also features drawings, paintings, prints, archives, historic books and photographs, and plaster casts. The library holds a complete set of the Academy’s annual exhibition catalogues dating from 1769 and loan exhibition catalogues from 1870. The research library of the Academy is open by appointment to researchers who wish to consult material not available elsewhere. Colour transparencies, high-resolution scans on CD, as well as colour and black and white photographs of much of the works in the Royal Academy’s collection can be supplied by the Picture Library.

The Royal Academy does not receive financial support from the state or Crown. Much of its revenue comes by hosting temporary public art exhibitions, which are comparable to those of the National Gallery and Tate Gallery. The Academy uses gifts and money to establish trust funds and support the work of the Royal Academy Schools by providing ‘premiums’ to students for excellence in various artistic genre. In September 2007, the director of the National Gallery, Charles Saumarez Smith, became secretary and chief executive of the Academy. Full membership to the Royal Academy is limited to 80 academicians (RAs), which consist of 46 painters (46), 14 sculptors, 8 printmakers and 12 architects, all of whom must be ‘professionally active’ in the UK.