When Christopher Le Brun, now the president of the Royal Academy, joined the institution in 1996 there was, he admits, "still something of a dilemma – should one join; should one not?" Many 20th-century greats did not: Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Bridget Riley. But Le Brun recollects now, "I thought this has been a great institution, with many of the greatest British artists in it, and it was definitely going to get better. It was absolutely clear it was going to get better."  For much of the 20th century the Royal Academy had been dogged by the actions of its presidents who were unprepared to change with the times. Whether it was Alfred Munnings, who denounced Picasso and Matisse and all that "so-called modern art" in a drunken speech at the annual dinner in 1947; or, a decade or so later, the architect Albert Richardson, who favoured knee breeches and a cocked hat as his everyday attire, and preferred candlelight to electricity.  Apart from a few exhibitions – such as A New Spirit in Painting in 1981, and Sensation, the appropriately named exhibition of Young British Artists, in 1997 – the Academy developed the reputation of being more of a gentleman’s club than a body of passionate contemporary artists. But now there is a groundswell of support to return the Academy to its former glory at the pinnacle of current art in this country – "an artist-run organisation sitting right at the heart of the art world," as Le Brun says.  Le Brun took over the presidency in 2011 and has been continuing the work of the previous president, the architect Nicholas Grimshaw, who was among the first to start work on transforming the Academy. The problem in part is how to make a radical transformation in the Academy’s outlook while maintaining many of its traditions. The academicians themselves describe the Academy as a "huge beast", a "dysfunctional family", with the general assembly meetings – the RA’s equivalent of Parliament – being "very passionate" and "wild". Here they can discuss all aspects of the running of the RA, but it is the voting for new members that usually stirs the most passion. The voting process for selecting academicians is lengthy and complicated and seems to have much in common with the 2010 selection process for the Labour leader. As Jock McFadyen RA explained to me over Guinness in a Mayfair pub, an artist must be nominated by an academician, who then has to canvass his peers to add eight signatures in support. The names of nominees who have enough signatures then go head to head for any available places at one of five general assembly meetings held each year.  Most years only one or two new members are elected, keeping the total number of academicians at 80. But due to the number of artists becoming senior academicians as they turn 75 (for example David Hockney, Norman Ackroyd, Tess Jaray and Allen Jones), in the past 12 months 10 new academicians have been appointed, the first time this has happened in the 246-year history of the Academy.  Academicians across the board describe the voting method as lengthy, convoluted, and prone to rigging and anti-voting (voting to ensure a person doesn’t get in, regardless of who then does). There is no postal voting: if you are working abroad, you simply can’t vote. Thus when I met the sculptor Cornelia Parker just before Christmas she was cursing her health: she had been too ill to attend the most recent general assembly, despite campaigning for the election of Bob and Roberta Smith (aka Patrick Brill), who is perhaps best described as a slogan artist and activist campaigner for art education, and is the sort of progressive artist whom many believe can help modernise the Academy. In the end he missed out by one vote. Recollecting the moment, Parker rolled her eyes. "I’d seen Antony Gormley [a fellow RA] the weekend before and he said we must make sure we were there," she said. "And when I didn’t turn up, he said, 'We were one vote short!' He sent me a long email about it. I thought, Oh, God!" But there was nothing to stop her trying again, and the week after I met her she was going to do just that. "I am going to email around and say to people: be there!" she told me.  Once elected, new academicians have to go through a short traditional ceremony, when they sign the roll of obligation. In November I witnessed this private ceremony as the Academy welcomed three new members: Yinka Shonibare, 51, best-known in Britain for Nelson's Ship in a Bottle, which took its place on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2010, along with his fellow sculptors Tim Shaw, 49, and Neil Jeffries, 54.  Le Brun, wearing his gold chain of office, called the group to order, and Charles Saumarez Smith, the secretary and chief executive of the Royal Academy, then read out the Terms of Obligation, a statement that has been read to all new incumbents since 1768. As the senior academician Norman Ackroyd explained to me, "You are agreeing to a legal obligation because the academicians are the owners and custodians of all the collections, of Michelangelo’s tondo [1504-06], the buildings, the leases and freeholds."  With all the accounts of argumentative and political meetings, the arcane rules (the Queen still has to approve each new president’s appointment, for example) and the politics of election, I was keen to ask the new RAs why they wanted to join the Academy. These three artists represent the breadth of membership of the RA. Tim Shaw is a Belfast-born artist who now lives and works in Cornwall. His sculptures often tackle difficult areas of recent history; his powerful Casting a Dark Democracy (2007-8) is a response to a much-circulated photograph of an Abu Ghraib prisoner. Neil Jeffries creates colourful sculptures built from narrative fragments like half-remembered dreams. He has taught at the Slade School of Art in London for more than 20 years and has strong support among the older members of the Academy. Yinka Shonibare explores colonialism and post-colonialism through his sculptures of figures clad in African fabrics. His mid-career survey show toured Sydney, New York and Washington DC; he was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2004; and his ship in a bottle sailed on from the Fourth Plinth to its permanent mooring at Royal Museums Greenwich.  Shonibare – who was, I understand, elected unanimously – confessed that being an academician was not something he had ever seriously thought about, unlike the Turner Prize or the Fourth Plinth. But he was looking forward to meeting other artists whose work he liked and respected. "I’m 51 now," he said, "and I understand that perhaps it is time to grow up, to be part of changing an institution, as opposed to being outside screaming." Was this what nudged him into accepting? "I think you can change an organisation by being part of it; running away doesn’t change it. So I would hope I could contribute, even in a small way, and bring the outside world into this place."  If you are one of the 94,000 Friends of the RA, or one of the one million visitors per year to its exhibitions at its home in Burlington House, Piccadilly, all this lobbying and campaigning has probably passed you by. If you have wandered through the John Madejski rooms on the first floor of Burlington House, you will have seen the spaces where the general assembly is held, but the meetings themselves are closed affairs. The Academy’s monthly council meetings, the annual dinner, the sanctioning supper, all happen in parallel to the public-facing exhibition programme and are all out of bounds to the general public. There’s a magnificently stocked art library, a state-of-the-art archive and a collection that includes work donated by every academician, from the founders Joshua Reynolds and William Chambers to recent incumbents such as Michael Craig-Martin, Gary Hume and Gillian Wearing.  The biggest surprise of all is the existence of the Royal Academy Schools literally under your feet, its plaster-cast corridors and top-lit studios accessed directly through an unmarked door behind the main staircase of Burlington House. The 60 students don’t enter this way but have to come and go via a rear delivery road, and every day they create their own works of art without the public probably even knowing they are there. But scroll forward to 2018 – the 250th anniversary of the RA – and this will all have changed.  The architect David Chipperfield (an RA, naturally) has drawn up a master plan that sees Burlington House connected to Burlington Gardens, the neoclassical former Museum of Mankind that backs on to it. The building faces Cork Street, which teems with commercial galleries, "And [it faces] Abercrombie & Fitch," Saumarez Smith interjects. He is keen to illustrate how much more approachable this new entrance will make the Royal Academy seem. "Physically it [Burlington Gardens] is more like a warehouse," he says.  The RA already holds contemporary exhibitions in Burlington Gardens, but when refurbished it will also house an education suite, permanent rooms for the collection and a day-lit amphitheatre similar to a Roman forum. Le Brun says jokingly, "Imagine we are all wearing togas in there; this is in the spirit of what we intend to do." The two buildings will be connected by a glass walkway that promises glimpses inside the RA Schools.  Le Brun’s aim is to bring the Academy back to its founding principles. Blockbuster exhibitions will continue – this year’s highlights include the successful Sensing Spaces show currently inhabiting the main galleries, and a major exhibition by Anselm Kiefer, an honorary, or international, academician. But Le Brun maintains that shows are not the key to unlocking the Academy’s potential. What is, then? "It is one of the only places in the world that is run by artists," he asserts, and argues that it is this that needs to be celebrated and built upon.  But is this really possible, given the eccentric traditions and arcane rules of the Academy, whose Summer Exhibition has more in common with Henley Regatta than Frieze Art Fair? If you want to buy a small print of flowers to hang in your hall or spend an hour or two browsing an eclectic range of paintings, sculptures and engravings, then it is an enjoyable enough experience. But it is a far cry from its original 18th-century position as the pre-eminent place to display and see contemporary art. "That is not the point of it," Le Brun says. "We are surrounded by wonderful exhibitions of contemporary art. What the Summer Exhibition does is very particular. It pays for the schools. We have the oldest art school in Britain, and it has always been free. When people buy a painting at the Summer Exhibition, 30 per cent of the price goes to supporting a student for three years of postgraduate study. And," he continues, "it underwrites our exhibitions, because not all of them make money."  Despite his defence of the exhibition – and it is hard to argue with the fact that one exhibition funds the RA Schools for an entire year – it is the chief area of the Academy that many academicians do want to change, to modernise. According to Parker, "It should be a place where people go to see what is happening now. That is what it used to be."She has curated a black-and-white themed room for this year’s show that she calls a "visual firebreak", and has already amassed an impressive list of works by the likes of David Shrigley, Christian Marclay, Mona Hatoum, Laure Prouvost, Martin Creed and Richard Deacon, among others. There will also be a digital submission process that she hopes will encourage the involvement of younger artists, who at the moment are more interested in being included in internationally recognised art fairs and exhibitions such as Frieze, and Documenta in Kassel.  All academicians are encouraged to include work in the Summer Exhibition. Shonibare is excited by the possibilities it throws up. "It is a privilege to show in the Summer Exhibition," he told me, rather unexpectedly. "You can develop work and see it alongside that of others, like being back at art school." When I repeat this to Le Brun, he smiles. "That is interesting," he says. "It is an incredibly difficult environment to show work in. All of us can show two paintings or sculptures in a white gallery, but to show two works among 200 is really tough."  A few days after our pub rendezvous, McFadyen sent me an email. It was timely; I had been thinking a lot about the latest general assembly, about the future of the RA and whether Parker and her band of progressive academicians would navigate Bob and Roberta Smith through the convoluted stages of voting and secure his election. McFadyen let me know that, the evening before, three new academicians had been voted in and he had the news I wanted to hear. "Bob Smith duly elected, hooray!" The Academy really is on the up, I thought. And for the first time ever I found myself writing the opening date for the Summer Exhibition in my diary.  Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined, to April 6; Summer Exhibition 2014, June 9-August 17; Anselm Kiefer Hon RA, September 27-December 14 (royalacademy.org.uk)  Main image: The Royal Academy’s governing council welcoming three new members: top, from left Jock McFadyen RA, Stephen Chambers RA, Spencer de Grey RA, Ann Christopher RA, Anne Desmet RA, Christopher Le Brun, PRA, Mariella Frostrup (external member), Stephen Farthing RA, Ian McKeever RA, Brendan Finucane QC (external member); bottom, from left Chris Orr RA, Cornelia Parker RA, Charles Saumarez Smith, Paul Huxley RA, Eileen Cooper RA, Neil Jeffries RA, Tim Shaw RA and Yinka Shonibare RA
Can the latest generation of artists elected to the Royal Academy restore the famously reactionary establishment to its position at the forefront of contemporary British art?