Sensation as Royal Academy returns to profit
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Your support makes all the difference.SUCCESSFUL exhibitions and strong financial management have transformed the financial fortunes of the debt-ridden Royal Academy in London, its management said yesterday.
An 11-per-cent increase in the number of visitors to more than 1 million helped turn in an operating surplus in 1997 for the first time in four years. And that was without the crowd-pulling Sensation exhibition which falls within the current financial year.
Ian Blatchford, the finance director, said it was on course to be out of the red by the end of 1999, a year earlier than projected in a business plan implemented when the Royal Academy hit financial disaster two years ago.
The Academy has gone for calculated programming to secure its future with a major Monet exhibition at the beginning of 1999. Its last show of Monet works, in 1990, proved the most popular in RA history with 658,000 visitors.
The financial turnaround comes two years after auditors discovered the 229-year-old institution had debts of more than pounds 3m following inadequate financial controls and a pounds 400,000 fraud by the former bursar, Trevor Clark.
The annual report yesterday showed that last year the RA cut its accumulated deficit to pounds 1.8m, returning an unexpected operating surplus of pounds 175,000. This compared with an operating deficit of pounds 1.4m in 1996.
Cost-cutting and new avenues for raising sponsorship contributed to the improvement. However, David Gordon, the former ITN chief executive brought in to resolve the crisis, warned that there was a limited amount of corporate sponsorship now available.
He backed The Independent's campaign for tax reform to encourage individual donations to the arts. "If the tax laws were simplified the whole process would be made much easier to use," he said.
Launching the annual report, Sir Philip Dowson, the RA's president, thanked the "herculean efforts" of staff for the turnaround and said: "The last year is really a very considerable achievement."
Three exhibitions - Giacometti, Braque and Living Bridges, which was sponsored by The Independent - attracted more than 100,000 visitors as well as receiving critical acclaim. The Summer Exhibition, where works by amateurs vye for position and sales with those by academicians, attracted nearly 150,000 visitors after years of decline.
The friends of the RA scheme, which celebrates its 21st anniversary this year, now has more than 70,000 members and is the third largest in the world. The corporate membership scheme, which includes 129 companies, is the largest in the UK.
Sir Philip said plans for the future included a pounds 100,000 feasibility study into taking over the vacated Museum of Mankind, which is owned by the Department of Culture, and turning it into an educational centre, including lecture room.
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