Catch up with this talk from Dr Fiona Bradley, Director of The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, as she discusses one of Dalí’s most famous and best loved paintings in the context of the artist's iconography of Port Lligat (the landscape of his home), Gala (his wife) and above all – himself.

Sophie Ward is the winner of the RA and Pin Drop short story award: hear Ward's story, 'Sunbed', read aloud to a live audience by actress Gwendoline Christie.

The RA and Pin Drop’s short story award offers a unique platform for emerging and established writers to showcase their short stories. The judging panel includes Pin Drop co-founders Elizabeth Day and Simon Oldfield, and the RA’s Artistic Director, Tim Marlow.

Catch up with this panel discussion featuring political satirist Steve Bell, artist Bedwyr Williams and artist duo John Wood and Paul Harrison as they explore humour and satire in art, discussing how it's impacted today’s contemporary art world.

Senior Curator Adrian Locke introduces the RA's exhibition ‘Intrigue: James Ensor by Luc Tuymans’ and examines the life and work of this truly original artist.

Though largely unknown in the UK, James Ensor is celebrated as one of Belgium’s most innovative artists, an enigmatic figure who rejected the academic training of his youth to cultivate his own individual style in the face of considerable opposition and hostile criticism.

This panel event explored the current state and future potential of contemporary urban gardening. Chaired by journalist and horticulturist Alys Fowler, the subversive and exciting work of guerrilla gardener and author Richard Reynolds, forager John Rensten and artist Wendy Shillam are brought to the table.

Image caption: video still of the dahlias in Emil Nolde's garden © Royal Academy of Arts

Celebrated photojournalist Don McCullin describes his experiences of war, poverty and suffering across the world during his 50-year career. Part of the Festival of Ideas programme, McCullin talks of sacrifices and consequences that have resulted from his commitment to the camera.

Come to the next Festival of Ideas live in the RA's Benjamin West Lecture Theatre – line-up coming soon: https://roy.ac/FOI2019

Monet and his fellow artist-gardeners applied their artistic eye to the composition of their gardens, using nature’s palette of flowers and foliage to create horticultural works of art. In this event, we consider how the artistic principles behind the use of colour and composition can be applied to planting and landscaping to transform garden design, creating harmony or contrast, and evoking different moods and a sense of space.

Garden designers Dan Pearson, Tom Stuart-Smith and Sarah Price, and artist Stephen Chambers RA explore how colour is used in modern garden design, in a panel discussion led by critic and historian Tim Richardson.

Image caption: video still of the dahlias in Emil Nolde's garden © Royal Academy of Arts

Thriller writer Nicci Gerrard talks about how everyday creativity can keep a person connected to the world around them. In conversation with academic Hannah Zeilig, Gerrard discusses how the arts can keep people well, aid recovery and support longer lives, better lived.

Come to the next Festival of Ideas live in the RA's Benjamin West Lecture Theatre – line-up coming soon: https://roy.ac/FOI2019

In this talk, Professor Sarah Churchwell examines the social and cultural context that created this first truly American modernist movement and the beginning of New York City’s influence as the centre of the western art world.

An unparalleled period in American art, the rise of Abstract Expressionism in America in the 1930s and 1940s reflected the broader cultural context of mid-20th-century America. Global economic, social and political developments impacted on the American, and in particular New York, art scene and led to the emergence of a movement that broke with conventions and brought American art to prominence worldwide.

Catch up on this conversation with the artist behind this year’s Summer Exhibition courtyard installation, Thomas Houseago, and the show's curator Edith Devaney.

Ranging from monumental to smaller-scale works, Houseago’s sculptures simultaneously convey states of power and vulnerability. He uses mediums traditionally associated with classical and modernist sculpture – including carved wood, clay, plaster and bronze – as well as less traditional materials like rebar (reinforcing steel bars) and hemp.

Exhibition curator Ann Dumas examines the different ways that artists ranging from Claude Monet to Henri Matisse painted the garden in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Image caption: video still of the dahlias in Emil Nolde's garden © Royal Academy of Arts

Goldie sits down with broadcaster and journalist Nihal Arthanayake to discuss the story behind his passion for both music – and his place in the birth of drum ‘n’ bass – and visual art, with his success as a graffiti artist in the 1980s. Following a traumatic childhood, which he describes in his memoir 'All Things Remembered', Goldie believes creative expression saved his life.

Look out for details of the next Festival of Ideas, coming soon: https://roy.ac/FOI2019

Architect Chris Wilkinson RA and painter Humphrey Ocean RA discuss what it is to draw, and why the process is central to their work.

Dr. Arturo Galansino, curator of 'Giovanni Battista Moroni', reveals the artistic qualities that separated Moroni from his contemporaries, and demonstrates why Moroni was the foremost portrait painter of his day.

Catch up on this event from the Benjamin West Lecture Theatre: Antony Gormley RA and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, debate the rich and intriguing relationship between theology and contemporary visual art.

Luc Tuymans discusses his distinguished career as a contemporary painter, as well as his curation of the James Ensor exhibition, with Senior Curator Adrian Locke.

Since the late 1970s, Tuymans’s easily-recognisable, sparsely-coloured figurative canvases have redefined the traditional genres of the everyday and history painting. Drawing in part on influences which range from Flemish Old Master painting to the contemporary mass media, his works are almost always painted from pre-existing imagery and produced in distinct, thematic series.

Artist and singer/songwriter Michael Stipe talks about his life-long passion for photography and its potential to produce a defining image of our times.

World renowned designer Sir Paul Smith discusses his humble beginnings, what inspires him, and the lessons he's learnt throughout his career.

Jonathan Jones of The Guardian explores the reasons why Giovanni Battista Moroni’s portrait ‘The Tailor’ is one of the greatest paintings in London.

Catch up with critically acclaimed actress Lisa Dwan reading from ‘Foirades/Fizzles’ by Samuel Beckett, a unique collection of short prose published in collaboration with Jasper Johns in 1972.

Please note that for copyright reasons, we have only included a short excerpt of Lisa Dwan's reading of ‘Foirades/Fizzles’.