Struggle for power

William Packer tries to unravel the disturbing twists and turns at the Royal Academy

From time to time since late July, the story of the resignation of Professor Brendan Neiland from the Keepership of the Royal Academy, his 'secret' account and a 'missing' £80,000 has passed across the pages of the daily papers, leaving the world to assume what it will. The press release issued at the time of his resignation naturally refreshed reporters' memories of the case of the Academy accountant who, a few years before, had salted away some £500,000, and by inevitable association, with no subsequent public correction, either of scale or kind, forthcoming from the Academy, Professor Neiland's reputation was dragged straight into the gutter. Now, in a partial and self-serving article in the current RA Magazine, the Academy's Secretary, Mrs Lawton Fitt, has set out to reassure us all, and the Academy's many friends and benefactors in particular, that all is well. She speaks of 'our internal investigation following the discovery of an unauthorised bank account in the Schools, and a pattern of unauthorised deposits and payments'. She goes on to admit that 'we have received oral assurances that the funds . . . were legitimately disbursed in operating the Schools', but labours the point that no supporting records were kept. 'The irregularities,' she declares, 'were discovered through the diligence of the Academy's staff and internal and financial monitoring systems.' So that is all right, then.

What she chooses not to say is that the account in question was no secret at all. It had been openly set up and used by Professor Neiland for at least the previous four years, so now to claim its discovery is, to say the least. disingenuous. Indeed, a member of Mrs Fitt's own office advised him to close it down some three years ago, which advice he doubtless wishes he had taken. And she also conspicuously fails to make clear that the monies at issue were raised by Professor Neiland himself. It is a nice irony that, in the same issue of the RA Magazine. another Academician, Ian Ritchie, exhorts his fellows to take much more upon themselves in working on behalf of the Academy. No one, certainly in its recent history, has been more active on the Academy's behalf than Professor Neiland.

The Keeper's principal responsibility is the running of the RA Schools. Upon his election to that office six years ago, Professor Neiland found that, of some £700.000 previously raised specifically for the benefit of the Schools. only £300,000 had come anywhere near them. He promptly resolved to plug the leak, and over the years since has raised by his own efforts some £1.4 million, principally in the form of bursaries and awards. His personally catastrophic mistake was then to take it upon himself to keep under his own immediate hand a fraction of that sum for direct use in and for the Schools — a mistake compounded, of course, by the failure to keep proper account. These are the £80,000 at issue, spent over the past several years variously on physical improvements and refurbishments, materials and equipment, direct help to students and entertainment in aid of further donations.

Over these six years, Professor Neiland has also raised the profile of the Schools immeasurably, quadrupling its application rate and reconfirming its historic position as one of the three principal post-graduate art schools in the country. That press release indeed quotes the President of the Academy, Professor Phillip King, as saying, 'We recognise Brendan Neiland's many achievements for the Schools and we regret that his tenure had to end in this way.' Privately he has said that 'he did a terrific job'.

All well and good, so far, and easy enough to sort out, or so one would think. But the more we look into this Neiland Affair, the clearer it becomes that this whole business is not just about an unofficial account and unaccounted funds: it is about power.

The Academy, we should remember, receives nothing at all from public funds, and must raise every penny for itself — from sales, exhibitions, subscriptions, donations and, increasingly, from selling itself in whatever way it can. For at least a lifetime past, it has been swinging from pillar to post to make ends meet, and with the ever more ambitious programme of exhibitions of recent years, and now its acquisition of the former Museum of Mankind at its back in Burlington Gardens, this constant financial prestidigitation has grown ever more precarious. And as its problems have grown, so has its administrative establishment.

Something of background is useful at this point — which I take from The History of the RA by a former Secretary, Sidney C. Hutchinson (Robert Royce, 1986): In their petition to George III in 1768, confirmed by Royal Charter, the founding artists set out the two principal objects of their proposed Academy as being 'establishing a well-regulated School or Academy of Design .. . and an Annual Exhibition'. The royal Instrument of Foundation itself (Appendix A: para.VII) states. 'There shall be a Keeper of the Royal Academy, elected by ballot, from amongst the Academicians; he shall be an able painter. ... or other Artist, properly qualified. His business shall be to keep the Royal Academy, with the Models, Casts, Books, and other moveables belonging thereto; to attend regularly the Schools, during the sittings of the students: . . . he shall have the immediate direction of all the servants of the Academy, shall regulate all things relating to the Schools ... ' Furthermore, the Secretary (para. VI), in those days likewise elected from among the members, was specifically designated the Keeper's deputy in case of indisposition. And that, mutatis mutandis, is how things largely remain, though since 1873 the Secretaryship has been a lay appointment.

The Keeper is, therefore, above the Treasurer and below the President, the second most senior of the officers of the Academy elected by ballot from among the members. None is in any sense an employee of the Academy, whereas the Secretary clearly nowadays is. If anyone is answerable to anyone, the Secretary is to them. Never in the Academy's history has any of these officers been presented with a contract of employment, let alone signed one. What emoluments they receive are in lieu of money they would otherwise have made but for their duties to the Academy. They are all, after all, working artists, or they would not be Academicians.

Earlier this summer, the present Secretary lost an embarrassingly public battle with the Academy's Exhibitions Secretary, Norman Rosenthal, whom, failing to rein in his ever more ambitious and expensive schemes, she had wished to have dismissed. She was thwarted in this by the Academicians, and Mr Rosenthal now knows who his friends are. Coming as it did so soon after that defeat, the Neiland Affair gave her a clear opportunity to renew the struggle. Early in July, she ejected Professor Neiland from his office, forbade him to enter the building and summarily dismissed him as Keeper on authority she assumed as Chairman of the initial Investigative Committee — whose investigations she nevertheless effectively admits, in the RA Magazine, are not yet concluded. She did so with no reference to the Council of the Academy, claiming further retrospective authority as 'line manager' over the Keeper, and summoning in aid a contract no Keeper has ever seen, let alone signed. The clear intention is to bring the Schools at last under the direct administrative sway of the Secretary, and render the Keeper no more than an employee.

Having heard Professor Neiland's appeal against his dismissal, the Council in its turn, in what were clearly distressing circumstances, exacted and immediately accepted his verbal resignation, allowing no opportunity for any formal exchange of letters. Yet by its own founding principles (para. IV: restated para. XXII), the Council cannot confirm any such fundamental business as a dismissal or a resignation without the prior consent of the General Assembly, and perhaps the Palace. By its own rules, the actions taken by both the Secretary and the Council would appear to have been both hasty and presumptuous, not to say prejudicial.

For it does appear that Professor Neiland was answerable not to Mrs Fitt as Secretary, nor even to the Council, but only to the General Assembly that elected him, for it to accept or reject his written and tendered resignation as it sees fit. Any action taken against him either by the Secretary or by the Council, under whatever practical financial and administrative rules had been laid down, could only have been temporising and provisional at best — a suspension under full pay, perhaps. The practical effectiveness of his dismissal, and the fairness of the process he has received, are certainly open to question.

So perhaps it is time to ask a question or two.

1: Is it true that the Secretary has now taken it upon herself to set out, for the very first time in the Academy's long history, a job description for the Keepership, along with a contract which, so she intends, the next elected Keeper will then be required to sign?

2: Is it also true that she, together with her former boss at Goldman Sachs, Simon Robertson, who is Chairman of the Academy's Trustees and was instrumental in securing her appointment, are seeking to change the constitution of the Academy to make her its Chief Executive, answerable not to the Council of the Academy and the General Assembly of Academicians, which is the Academy's constituent and confirming body, but also to the Trustees?

3: Is it likely that the Academicians will cut their own throats in this way? And would it need an Act of Parliament anyway, or to go perhaps to the Queen in Council?

4 (and perhaps the most important of them all): If the Keeper goes, who is next in line for the Secretary-cum-Chief Executive to supersede in effective office — the Treasurer? The President? The Council? And where would that leave the Academicians, and indeed the Academy as an Academy?

We shall see.

Postscript: As a personal note, I would like to add that I have known the Royal Academy since first I came to London as an art student 45 years ago. I have seen every Summer Exhibition since 1960, first had a painting accepted in 1963, and have felt the pains of rejection and joys of acceptance at intervals ever since. As a critic over more than 30 years, I have been that rare creature, its generally sympathetic reviewer. Among the many Academicians I have come to count among my friends are the present President, Treasurer and indeed the beleaguered Keeper himself In short, I count myself an old friend of the Academy itself And, this being so, I find its present travails a cause not just of worry but also of grief