Compare and contrast the role and reputation of the Royal Academy and the Grosvenor Gallery within the Victorian art world.

The Royal Academy and the Grosvenor Gallery were two major institutions of art display of the Victorian era. Their aim were both to display work of art to the public, but their different functioning pulled them apart to each other. What were their policies and rules? What audience did they intend to attract? Being a museum or a gallery did necessary had to make them be so different? Throughout this essay I will explore theses multiple differences (and sometimes similarities) in terms of functioning, social aim and institution themselves.

In the Victorian era, the emergence of museums and galleries was a key factor of this period. There was an intense desire of educating the population of Britain by initiating them through the art. However each institution was in some ways, different in terms of functioning. First difference is the name in itself: what makes a museum be different from a gallery? In fact not much really except that a museum is a public place often loaned by the government and a gallery is hold by a private owner. After come differences in terms of size of the place, the selling policies and type of audience. This is why it makes the Royal Academy be different from the Grosvenor Gallery. Before I start developing theses points, lets explore another major difference, which is that the Royal Academy has been created one decade before the Grosvenor Gallery. The Royal Academy was founded the 10th December 1768. It then became the oldest established society in Britain, exclusively devoted to fine arts. This devotion was a response to the need for the creation of a school to train students in the Fine Arts in the 18th century. One hundred and nine years later, in 1877, arrived the Grosvenor Gallery. Not to say that the Royal Academy already had a consequent past and experience from then. Although the subject is about the two