ROYAL CANADIAN ACADEMY OF ARTS

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'The Royal Canadian Academy of Arts' is a Canadian arts-related institution founded in 1880, under the patronage of the Governor General of Canada, Sir John Douglas Sutherland Campbell, the Marquess of Lorne.
It received the title Royal Canadian Academy of Arts from Queen Victoria on July 16, 1880.
'Who is the RCA?'
The Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts (RCA) is one of Canada’s most enduring cultural institutions. Having celebrated 125 years in 2005, today’s Academy is composed of over 500 established professionals working across Canada in 20 visual arts disciplines; from painting and sculpture to architecture, design, fine craft, photography and filmmaking. The RCA continues to consider new forms of visual expression as they emerge. From the beginning, members have been elected to the Academy in mid-career by a jury of their peers. The RCA is unique in that it recognizes the many innovators on the national arts scene in Canada.
'What is its purpose?'
Through exhibitions and special events, the RCA celebrates the achievements, the innovation, and the vision, of Canada’s visual artists.
Through scholarships and mentoring, the RCA encourages and supports emerging visual artists from across the country.
The RCA seeks to facilitate an understanding by all Canadians of the importance of the visual arts as an aspect of our national identity, as cultural expression, and as a source of social capital in our culturally diverse country
'Where did the RCA come from?'
Encouraged by Canada’s Governor General, the Marquis of Lorne, the RCA was founded in 1880 by 26 of the country’s most accomplished painters, sculptors and architects. Determined to foster the visual arts in their young country, these artist-pioneers laid much of the foundation of Canada’s visual arts heritage, their diploma pieces forming the nucleus of the National Gallery of Canada collection, also founded in 1880. Today, many Canadians are surprised to learn that until as late as 1976, diploma works of newly elected RCA Academicians were deposited in the National Gallery collection. The story of those early beginnings is housed in the National Archives and, along with the RCA’s own records, provides indispensable research material to scholars and historians.
'Who has belonged to the RCA in the past, and who are its members today?'
Perhaps you will know some of them…
Think of painters from the very early years - Lucius R. O’Brien, first president of RCA, 1880, Napoléon Bourassa, first Vice President of RCA, 1880, Paul Peel, and Marc Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté.
Well-known Academicians elected in the last century include
David Blackwood, printmaker; Charles Gagnon, painter; Lawren P. Harris, painter; Gershon Iskovitz, painter; Norman Jewison, filmmaker; Yousuf Karsh, photographer; William Kurelek, painter; John C. Parkin, architect, and Frederick Varley, painter.
Today the RCA counts amongst its members Douglas Cardinal, architect; Atom Egoyan, filmmaker; Vera Frenkel, artist in new media; Geneviéve Cadieux and Thaddeus Holownia, photographers, Reinhard Reitzenstein, sculptor, and David Urban, painter.
'And how does the RCA pursue its various activities?'
Three ways:
- through the RCA Trust Fund which provides grants to public galleries across Canada to purchase and exhibit works of living Canadian artists,
- through the RCA Scholarship Fund which provides financial assistance to young Canadians for post-graduate study in the visual arts, and
- through the RCA Programme Fund which mounts RCA exhibitions, produces publications and other public activities aimed at strengthening Canadians’ appreciation of the historic context of art and design and the work of their contemporary visual artists.

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See also

List of Canadian organizations with royal patronage

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Royal Canadian Academy of Arts