A GREAT EXHIBITION FOR THE 21st CENTURY
Open to the public 15 – 28 June 2007
Free admission

1857
In the wake of The Great Exhibition, all the great South Kensington cultural and educational institutions arrive in the area. Exhibition Road is born.

2007
150 years after moving to its South Kensington home, and very much in the spirit of the original 1851 Exhibition: the Royal College of Art announces The Great Exhibition 2007.

To celebrate this anniversary in style, the College will be holding an even more spectacular Summer Show than usual in a huge tent (120 x 25 metres) in Kensington Gardens, running simultaneously with an exhibition in the College galleries from 15 to 28 June. Supported by generous sponsorship from The Conran Foundation and located near the site of the original Great Exhibition of 1851, the extra space will enable the RCA to show the work of all of its graduating students at the same time.

For the first time in living memory, Fine Art and Applied Art postgraduate students will be exhibiting with Design, Architecture, Humanities, Communications and Fashion and Textiles – the art and design of the 21st Century coming together in a radically contemporary take on the spirit of 1851. This will be a great adventure for the College. It will show art in a design environment and design in an art environment – a philosophy which is at the heart of the College.

Rector of the College, Sir Christopher Frayling said: “This has to be one of the most exciting developments to have happened during my time here at the College. I like to think that Prince Albert would have loved it! This will be a major event not only for us but for the whole of South Kensington.”

He added: “The Conran Foundation has for a second year running provided the means to deliver our Summer exhibition. We are enormously grateful for their additional support this special year, for The Great Exhibition 2007. The Foundation’s vision and generosity will help launch the 2007 RCA graduates into their professional careers.”

Sir Terence Conran said:
“We are delighted to once again work with the Royal College of Art. The Conran Foundation is committed to promoting a better understanding of the commercial and cultural benefits of good design, and what better way to do this than to support The Great Exhibition 2007 – where design and art meet and do marvellous things together in what could well be the greatest Show in the RCA’s history.”

The Great Exhibition 2007 will be taking place on the exact anniversary of the opening of the South Kensington Museum. There will be work by over 400 graduating students from Animation, Architecture, Ceramics & Glass, Communication Art & Design, Design Products, Design Interactions, Fashion, Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork & Jewellery, Humanities, Industrial Design Engineering, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture, Textiles and Vehicle Design.

The Great Exhibition 2007: 15 - 28 June
Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU & Kensington Gardens
Tel: 020 7590 4498 or check www.rca.ac.uk for opening times.
Free admission
Tube: High Street Kensington/South Kensington
Buses: 9, 10, 52
Disabled access

For further information, please contact Aine Duffy, Head of Media Relations at the Royal College of Art, on 020 7590 4127 or aine.duffy@rca.ac.uk or Sue Bradburn on 020 7590 4114 or sue.bradburn@rca.ac.uk.

The Great Exhibition 1851
The first in a series of World's Fairs of culture and industry that were to be a popular 19th century feature, the Great Exhibition was held in Hyde Park, London, in 1851. It was phenomenally popular. As a lasting legacy of the first exhibition, in 1853 Prince Albert described a general plan for the buildings he would like to see on the newly purchased site at Kensington, including Museums and Schools of Design, Science and Industry. These would be built on the profits of 1851.

In Summer 1857 The South Kensington Museum duly opened on the north side of Brompton Road, east of Exhibition Road. One of the key elements of Albert’s vision was that art and industry would work together, and to that end the Government School of Design moved to what came to be known as ‘Albertopolis’. Out of the South Kensington Museum grew today’s V&A, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum, as well as Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art.

The Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, specialising in teaching and research and offering the degrees of MA, MPhil and PhD across the disciplines of fine art, applied art, design, communications and humanities. There are over 900 masters and doctoral students and more than a hundred professionals interacting with them – including scholars, leading art and design practitioners, along with specialists, advisors and distinguished visitors. For more information on the Royal College of Art visit www.rca.ac.uk.

The Conran Foundation was founded in 1980 by Sir Terence Conran. Its first initiative, the seminal Boilerhouse Project gallery at the V&A became the Design Museum at Butlers Wharf, the first museum in the world dedicated to the promotion and examination of design. For more information on the Conran Foundation visit www.conranfoundation.com.