Academicians

Today the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts has a unique position as an independent artist-run community with peer-elected Academicians at the helm. Collectively, RHA member artists are the most important and diverse names in 21st-century Irish art.

Deeply involved in our day-to-day running and strategy, it is their combined decision-making that best supports practitioners through public exhibition, indispensable training and dedicated residency awards and studio bursaries.

Academician titles are awarded by an election and voting system, based on an individuals’ merit as a professionally active artist or architect in Ireland.

We have 30 Academicians, 15 Senior Academicians and 10 Associate Academicians presided over by the 24th President, Dr. Abigail O’Brien PRHA. All Academicians are entitled to exhibit up to six works in the RHA Annual Exhibition and to show their work in the RHA Ashford Gallery. Many Academicians are also involved in teaching and the RHA School’s talk series and Masterclasses as part of the student programme.

The governance structure of the Academy consists of the Assembly, the Council, the Director and the staff of the Academy. These are supported by two advisory boards to the Council: the School Board and the Programme Board. The RHA also has an Honorary Council to bring together eminent individuals from beyond the art world.

The Four Officers and Council of the RHA are elected each year at the Academy’s AGM in October.

Our Presidents are always elected by their fellow Academicians and rules dictate that Officers cannot serve for more than five consecutive years and Council Members rotate every two years. 

Generally impartial, the President can summon the Council and General Assemblies, but only vote on matters when votes are tied. The President is the RHA’s formal representative and takes the lead on all fundraising efforts to secure our future.

The executive function of the RHA is centralised on the Academy Council: it is our legal executive board. Made up of 7 Academicians and the Four Officers, the Council is a committee that is responsible for the direction and management of every major aspect of the Academy.

Various advisory groups report to Council on each area of the RHA’s activities and recommend policy. 

The Officers and Council of the Royal Hibernian Academy are elected each year at the Academy’s AGM in October. Officers may serve no more than five consecutive years and Members of the Council rotate every two years.

Through roving monarchs, famine, insurrections and Irish independence, the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts has lived 200 years like an Olympic flame. With different artists at the helm, its story has often been volatile, instinctive and often imperfect – but always unabashedly human. 

It was an original band of thirty or so who doggedly pursued a Charter of Incorporation to transform the landscape of Ireland’s arts and cultural sector. 

Just as national academies around Europe had emerged as major arbiters of style and taste, this closely-knit group of artists were keen enter the fray and likewise steer the course of Western aesthetics. 

While in its earliest years funding for the Academy was underwritten by the English monarchy, today the RHA operates as a charity, receiving the majority of its income from exhibitions, Friends and Benefactors.