Royal Academy of Arts [ Institutions ]
… The exhibition held at Somerset House from 1780 was the means to create a public, who, with the exception of the lower classes, excluded by an entrance fee, could share in the experience of visual sociability. At the end of the century, … had led organizers of the first artistic shows before the founding of the Royal Academy to try to exclude the lower classes, a precedent which was taken up in academic practice. 8 For its first exhibition in Pall Mall in April 1769, the … distinction and/or social intercourse. Some viewers were there only to be seen and acknowledge members of their own class or ‘only for the sake of saying they have been there’. 10 However, ‘visual sociability’ could be achieved through …
Academies | Art | Conflict | Dining | Exhibitions | France
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