He’s been the secretary and chief executive of London’s Royal Academy of Arts for only a year, but Charles Saumarez Smith is already transforming that venerable institution, founded in 1768 to promote the visual arts, with his popularizing zeal. Although he was previously director of the National Gallery and, before that,the National Portrait Gallery, both bastions of tradition, Saumarez Smith is committed to expanding the academy’s purview to include the avant-garde. Robert Ayers spoke to him about being an impresario, how he sees the London art scene changing and how he is daring to make the RA part of that change.

In the past your attempts to appeal to larger audiences have led to your being called a showman. How does this make you feel?

The Royal Academy demands some of the characteristics ofa showman. For the economics to work, you need a minimum of 200,000 visitors per show,and that is the territory of big popular exhibitions.

Still, you’ve expressed regret that the Royal Academy is seen primarily as an exhibition venue. Will you promote fewer exhibitions in the future?

The RA is far more than a Kunsthalle. It is one of Britain’s premier art schools and the representative institution of the nation’s leading painters, sculptors and architects. If anything,we’ll do more exhibitions,because of the acquisition of 6 Burlington Gardens, the former Museum of Mankind.

You’ve raised some eyebrows by inviting the London gallery Haunch of Venison to program that building.

We’re still in negotiations. As to the benefits, we have a big exhibition space but not the resources to run it. We’ll let the space for three years to Haunch of Venison, which already operates an ambitious contemporary-art program.The rental income will finance the space’s refurbishment. This arrangement will enable us to see what audience there is for contemporary exhibitions and to explore the building’s best long-term use.

Isn’t that an unusual relationship for a major public institution to enter into with a commercial gallery?

In terms of doing ambitious exhibitions, the big contemporary-art galleries—Victoria Miro, Gagosian and White Cube, as well as Haunch of Venison—are indisputably moving into the area traditionally occupied by public institutions and doing very grand, interesting and worthwhile shows.

However, the RA will employ the building every year for GSK Contemporary—named for the longtime academy supporter GlaxoSmithKline.

Yes, we’ll run the GSK Contemporary season there from November to January. It’s a move into uncharted terrain, as the RA hasn’t occupied the field of the international contemporary avant-garde in the past. We’ve put together a changing program of new work from overseas, including film and performance, and combined it with a bar and a restaurant. The space will be open from midday to midnight four days a week, so the whole chemistry of it is very different from that of a traditional art exhibition. It’s an attempt to respond to the shifting expectations of our audience.

How would you characterize that change?

It’s the growth of a democratic audience for contemporary art. In the late 1980s it wasn’t imaginable that in London an institution devoted to contemporary art would attract more than 5 million visitors a year, as the Tate Modern does. Now the whole landscape has changed dramatically, and the contemporary-art market has become incredibly attractive.

One particular change at the Royal Academy has been the departure of Norman Rosenthal, the exhibitions secretary who was something of an innovator himself.

I get on well with Norman Rosenthal and admire him. He had a remarkable track record during his 31 years here, but he had been in negotiations about going freelance for years.

What of the rumor that Damien Hirst has been invited to become a Royal Academician?

The rumor may be true! The process of election is in the hands of the academicians, I have to say. But whether it’s conscious or unconscious, they have very impressively broadened the range of people represented. The academy is now a more diverse mix than it has been traditionally.

"Conversation with Charles Saumarez Smith" originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's October 2008 Table of Contents.