The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

What I wanted to post here was the quite amazing edition of Classic Albums I saw last night about Jay-Z’s first album Reasonable Doubt, what with it being all topical and everything. But I can’t do that because somebody—most likely the record label’s Senior Vice President for Stupid—has forbidden the BBC from putting the show on the Internet.

So, instead, I’ll post a Culture Show special from the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. The Exhibition is well over 200 years old but, against all the odds, seems to be perfectly relevant and up-to-the-minute: actually quite sexy. When I was an art student (which was also well over 200 years ago) the Summer Exhibition was the definition of fusty and forgotten: there’s obviously been some fairly clever re-branding done at Burlington House.

The best bit of this show is when the academicians take a break from picking works for the exhibition and are served the traditional beef tea with sherry. If I had a tradition like that I’d definitely observe it. In fact, I’m thinking of starting one…