September 23, 2023
Marina Abramović Makes History at the Royal Academy
Marina Abramović became the first woman to take over the Royal Academy's main galleries in its 250-year history, with a career-spanning show of endurance and presence.
In 2023 the 'grandmother of performance art' broke a 250-year-old barrier: Marina Abramović became the first woman to fill the Royal Academy of Arts' main galleries with a solo exhibition.
The show retraced a career built on the body, time and sheer endurance — works in which she has sat in silence for days, walked the Great Wall of China, and pushed herself to physical extremes. Live re-performances by trained artists kept that intensity alive in the rooms.
It was both a celebration and a corrective — a reminder of how long it took one of the most influential artists alive to be given the institution's grandest stage.
Image: “War Memorial, Royal Academy, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London (geograph 2956905)” — PAUL FARMER, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.