Studio Adrien Gardère

The Royal Academy of Arts appointed Studio Adrien Gardère to design the exhibition display of its permanent galleries within the architectural extension and renovation carried out by David Chipperfield Architects (DCA), which links Burlington House and Burlington Gardens for the first time, uniting and revitalizing the two-acre site.

As Charles Saumarez Smith, Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Arts from 2007 to 2018, and former Director of the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery in London, wrote:

"At the Royal Academy, Gardère suggested that we should think about the presentation of the collection not in terms of a single gallery, but rather as something to be seen and experienced throughout the building - a simple concept that seems so obvious that many others have taken credit for it. " Changing fashions in exhibition design - Frieze Magazine - Issue 214 - October 2020

Studio Adrien Gardère has designed and staged the resulting exhibition space into a series of thematic galleries, revealing for the first time the richness of the Royal Academy's collections. 

Studio Adrien Gardère, hence designed all these new exhibitions spaces across the site, creating a suite of thematic galleries – sculpture, architecture, paintings – which showcase the richness of the RA collections.
 

Curated by Royal Academicians, these permanent exhibitions include:
- The Collection Gallery, curated by Christopher Le Brun, showcasing the RA’s masterpieces
- The Vaults, exploring 250 years of artistic teaching in the RA Schools
- The Dame Jillian Sackler Sculpture Gallery, curated by Richard Deacon, highlighting the RA sculptures collection
- The Architecture Wall, curated by Spencer de Grey presenting, across a three-story vertical wall, scale one architectural details and prototypes of all current architect Academicians
- The Dorfman Architecture Court, reuniting RA’s unique architectural stucco and plaster collection