The world’s largest open submission contemporary art show (over 11,000 entries received this year), now in its 244th year, continues the tradition of showcasing work by both emerging and established artists in all media including painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, architecture and film. 

Inside the Main Galleries, paying homage to Matisse’s The Red Studio, the Wohl Central Hall will show a display of colourful works.

Chris Wilkinson RA and Eva Jiricna RA will curate the architecture gallery of the Summer Exhibition this year.

Other highlights will include a video room dedicated to the work of Jayne Parker and a gallery of Scottish and Irish artists arranged by Barbara Rae RA. Other artists exhibiting this year include Christopher Le Brun PRA, Michael Landy RA, Tracey Emin RA, Ken Howard RA, Raqib Shaw, Calum Innes and Keith Coventry among others.

This summer, as Britain celebrates The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the Royal Academy is marking the occasion with a series of displays and events.

Peter Greenham’s Study for a Portrait of Her Majesty The Queen (1964) is on show in the entrance hall, while displays in the John Madejski Fine Rooms celebrate the long-standing connection between the monarchy and the Academy from its foundation in 1768 to the present day.

Kokoro means 'heart' in Japanese; it is the 'feeling', the 'inner meaning' that underpins the Japanese approach not only to art, but to Japanese life as a whole. It is what makes Japan quintessentially Japanese.

This selection of paintings by internationally renowned Irezumi master and tattoo artist Horiyoshi III documents the artist's support of traditional japanese culture, history and craftsmanship --- although he embraced the modern western world, observed it, understood it and changed his art, evolving but keeping it japanese; this is ultimately the power and essence of Kokoro.

Co-organised by the Royal Academy of Arts and the Yale Center for British Art, this exhibition constitutes a radical re-evaluation of the extraordinary life and career of this brilliant and enigmatic artist whose paintings explored the interstices of Georgian society and the complexities of British imperial rule.

Born near Frankfurt in 1733, Zoffany moved to London in 1760. Adapting to the indigenous art culture and patterns of patronage, he created virtuoso portraits and subject pictures that proved to be highly desirable to a wide range of patrons. His work provides an invaluable and often unique appraisal of key British institutions and edifices: the art academy; the Court; the theatre; the bourgeois family; and the British Empire.
 
The exhibition features oil paintings, and a selection of drawings and prints from British and international public and private collections, a number of which have been rarely or never exhibited before. The works testify to the central importance of Zoffany to the artistic culture of eighteenth-century Europe.

The Comte de Vaudreuil (1740–1817) was one of the leading courtiers and collectors of paintings in Paris during the 1780s. This display features Dutch and Flemish Old Master paintings in the National Gallery’s collection that were once owned by Vaudreuil or were in Parisian collections at that time.

Vaudreuil’s collection provides an example of the decoration of wealthy homes in pre-Revolution Paris. Reflecting the fashion of the time, the paintings are hung according to their size and symmetry rather than by subject or chronology.

The display features paintings from the Comte’s collections by artists Jan Wijnants, Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan Steen and Adriaen van Ostade .

Alongside these are works that were in French collections in the same period by artists Nicolaes Berchem, Aelbert Cuyp, Willem van de Velde and Gabriel Metsu.

Song Dong’s monumental installation Waste Not is a collaboration between the artist and his mother, Zhao Xiangyuan. The installation comprises the frame of his mother’s house along with all of the everyday objects she meticulously collected over the course of her lifetime: a collection of over ten thousand worn and broken objects, each one with unlimited potential value. Together, the assembled materials—clothes, books, kitchen utensils, toiletries, school supplies, shopping bags, rice bowls, dolls—were used, recycled, and saved. Meticulously arranged in careful groupings throughout the exhibition space, the objects form a miniature cityscape that viewers can navigate around and through.

Waste Not—or wu jin qi gong in Chinese—describes the philosophy of life for a generation of people in China, of which Song Dong’s mother was a part, who grew up during the Cultural Revolution with the experience of displacement, poverty and the constant shortage of goods. The installation stands as a record of his mother’s life, as well as a tribute to his father’s death.

Since 1977 Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has lived voluntarily in a psychiatric institution, and much of her work has been marked with obsessiveness and a desire to escape from psychological trauma. In an attempt to share her experiences, she creates installations that immerse the viewer in her obsessively charged vision of endless dots and nets or infinitely mirrored space.

At the centre of the art world in the 1960s, Yayoi Kusama  came into contact with artists including Donald Judd, Andy Warhol, Joseph Cornell and Claes Oldenburg, influencing many along the way. She has traded on her identity as an "outsider" in many contexts - as a female artist in a male-dominated society, as a Japanese person in the Western art world, and as a victim of her own neurotic and obsessional symptoms. After achieving fame and notoriety with groundbreaking art happenings and events, she returned to her country of birth and is now Japan's most prominent contemporary artist.

Turina, Mompou, Toldrá, Obradors, Barber, Copland, Bolcom

Christine Brewer, soprano
Roger Vignoles, piano

Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin

Richard Goode, piano

Scarlatti, Clementi, Chopin

Pietro De Maria, piano

After receiving the Critics’ Prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition (1990), Pietro De Maria won First Prize in the Dino Ciani – Teatro La Scala in Milan (1990), the Géza Anda in Zurich (1994) and the Mendelssohn Award in Hamburg (1997).

He has since performed with many of the world’s leading conductors. His repertoire ranges from Bach to Ligeti. He is the first Italian pianist to have played Chopin’s complete piano works in public concerts.

Mozart
Sonata No. 3 in Bb K281
Sonata No. 4 in Eb K282
Sonata No. 5 in G K283
Sonata No. 10 in C K330
Sonata No. 13 in Bb K333

Christian Blackshaw, piano

Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez is a 2006 Grammy Award winner for Best Jazz Instrumental Album.

Danilo Perez, piano
Ben Street, bass
Adam Cruz, drums

Born in Badin, North Carolina on 1 November 1926,  alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson was acclaimed from the mid-fifties onwards as taking forward the sound and concept of that other alto saxophone legend Charlie Parker. From the noteworthy live debut of Jazz Messengers ‘A Night at Birdland’ where he shared frontline duties with trumpeter Clifford Brown through the bluesy sixties Blue Note sessions in collaboration with organist Dr Lonnie Smith and arriving at the cohesive quartet he leads today, his jazz credentials to groove and swing are impeccable.

Lou Donaldson is one of the most popular alto saxophonists to ever record for the Blue Note label.

Lou Donaldson, saxophone
Randy Johnston,guitar
Akiko Tsuruga, Hammond organ
Fukushi Tainaka, drums

For consumer and fashion fetishists, Hermès is celebrating its 175th year with a major new exhibition in the galleries at 6 Burlington Gardens. Hermès Leather Forever celebrates Hermès’ relationship with leather through a presentation of items from Hermès’ past, such as those commissioned by the Duke of Windsor for his Duchess as well as some of its latest creations.

Hermès was founded by Thierry Hermès in Paris in 1837, as a house of master harness-making and later saddle-making. Since then, six generations of enterprising artisans have explored new markets and new skills in the expansion of the French luxury brand's product range.

Craftspeople from the Hermès workshops in Paris will be present at the exhibition demonstrating the art of leather working by creating some of its iconic works in situ.