Royal Academy of Arts Announces Jeff Koons as New Honorary Member of the Royal Academy

LONDON.- Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania, 1955. He received his B.F.A. at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since his emergence in the 1980s Jeff Koons has blended the concerns and methods of Pop, Conceptual, and appropriation art with craft- making and popular culture to create his own unique iconography, often controversial and always engaging. His work explores contemporary obsessions with sex and desire; race and gender; and celebrity, media, commerce, and fame. In 2002, Jeff Koons received a Doctorate of Fine Arts, Honoris Causa, from The Corcoran in Washington D.C. Later, in 2008, he received an Honorary Doctorate from School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Since his first solo show in 1980, Koons’ work has been widely exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions. Recent solo shows include the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (2003), the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo (2004), which traveled to the Helsinki City Art Museum (2005); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2008); “Jeff Koons: Versailles”, Chateâu de Versailles, France (2008- 2009). In 2009 alone, Koons had four major solo exhibitions in public institutions: the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; and the Serpentine Gallery, London. Koons lives and works in New York City.

The Royal Academy of Arts is governed by 80 Royal Academicians who are all practising painters, sculptors, engravers, printmakers, draughtsmen and architects. Elections are held annually and new Members are voted in by existing RAs.

Honorary Academicians are distinguished artists who are not resident in the UK. They do not take part in the governance of the RA and do not have voting rights. A maximum of two per year may be appointed by the RAs.