The Royal Academy reckons with its history in Entangled Pasts, 1768–now: Art, Colonialism and Change

In this beautifully assembled but well-mannered show, great (white) British artists such as Joshua Reynolds and JMW Turner are displayed alongside contemporary stars from Sonia Boyce to Yinka Shonibare as the RA interrogates its institutional links to colonialism

Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA, ‘Portrait of a Man, probably Francis Barber’, c. 1770 (The Menil Collection, Houston)

Since the furious Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, prompted by the death of George Floyd, just about every cultural institution in Britain has made some sort of expiatory gesture, whether it’s offering to return artefacts or mounting a hastily organised display. Three-and-a-half years on, the Royal Academy offers its own ambitious response, putting great (white) British artists of the past such as Joshua Reynolds and JMW Turner “in conversation” with great contemporary (Black) artists of the order of Sonia Boyce, Frank Bowling and Yinka Shonibare. The core issues around facing up to Britain’s colonial past haven’t gone away. Yet, while this beautifully assembled but well-mannered exhibition invokes fist-waving buzzwords such as “resistance” and “change” in its blurb, it’s unlikely to have visitors rushing to the barricades.

Since 2021, the Royal Academy has been carrying out research into its institutional links to colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade, and the ways this has impacted the images produced by its members – who include most of the great British artists of the past 200 years. This exhibition presents some of the findings alongside a kind of commentary, of mostly existing works by leading contemporary artists of the Caribbean, African and American diasporas including Kara Walker, John Akomfrah, El Anatsui, Barbara Walker, Lubaina Himid and Hew Locke – almost all of them Royal Academicians or honorary members. It’s an opportunity for the RA to demonstrate not only that it’s doing the right thing by history, but how many of the great and the good of the Black art scene are closely involved in the organisation as it exists today. Yet the show is very much more than a great PR exercise.

Pieces like Kara Walker’s ‘no world’ are contrasted by 18th-century romanticist seascapes (Kara Walker, courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co. and Sprüth Mager)