It was a right royal occasion last night (11 October) at the Royal Academy of Arts in London where the Queen was honoured with a special awards ceremony marking her 90th birthday. Five distinguished individuals who have contributed as “practitioners or educators in the fields of visual arts or architecture” received gongs from HRH. The lucky recipients were: the architect David Adjaye; Iwona Blazwick, the director of London’s Whitechapel Gallery; Chris Fisher, a tutor at the Royal College of Art; the photographer Martin Parr, and the artist Cornelia Parker (the nominations came from five Royal Academicians: Chantal Joffe, Farshid Moussavi, Grayson Perry, Conrad Shawcross and Yinka Shonibare). “As the Royal Academy approaches its 250th anniversary in 2018, when we will reveal our transformative development, we will continue to be the voice of artists and architects for many centuries to come,” comments Charles Saumarez Smith, the chief executive of the RA.
