academy

   A learned group accepted as authoritative in its discipline (subject area), or a school in which art is taught. Originally the school of philosophy founded by Plato in the garden of Academe, a district in the vicinity of Athens. It was closed by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, with the other pagan schools, in 529 CE. The term usually refers to a recognized society established for the promotion of one or more of the arts or sciences. The earliest such organization was the Museum of Alexandria, founded by Ptolemy Soter in the third century BCE. The first such academy following the classical era in Europe was the Florentine Academy of Design (Accademia di Designo), founded by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) in 1560. Michelangelo was elected an officer in 1563, one year before he died. Numerous academies flourished in Italy, France, Germany, Austria, and Britain during and since the Renaissance. By 1729 there were more than five hundred in Italy alone. Academies specifically for art instruction Among the several academies in France, the one concerned with the visual arts is the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, founded in 1648 by Colbert and King Louis XIV, and later known as the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Because the French academies dictated elaborate conventions and aesthetic doctrines for the manufacture of works of art, the term "academic" came to imply derivative rather than creative work. In England, the Royal Academy of Arts was established in 1768. Today it serves primarily as an art school and exhibition facility. The first art museum and art school in the U.S. was the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, founded in 1805 by Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827). Because they've generally supported the aesthetic tastes of their elders, academies have often been the targets of innovators in the arts. Also see academic, academic figure, academician, avant-garde, Salon, and teacher.