The core competencies of the Corporation, according to the Statues, are:

  1. Promote the research on fine arts in Catalonia.
  2. Collaborate in the strict fulfillment of the legislation in regards of appreciation, defense, conservation and restoration of monuments and goods of artistic interest.
  3. Arrange trainings, conferences, expositions, contests, concerts, etc. and publish works that contribute to the study and promotion of the fine arts.
  4. Be part or consult the organisms of the public administration and official artistic corporations, and communicate, coordinate and exchange with the rest of similar academies and institutions.
  5. Preserve, study, widen and spread its rich artistic patrimony: the collections of paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings and all those corresponding to the different present and future sections, as for example cinema, music, design, visual arts, etc., that are property of its museum, including the works located in different institutions.
  6. Preserve, catalog and make available the library and its archives of: the Academy (from 1850 to the present), the School of Fine Arts (1775/1850-1921), the Provincial Commission of Monuments (1844-1883), and the Comisión Valoradora de Objetos de Arte a Exportar (Comission to Value the Objects of Art to Export) (1922-1936). It also has a photographic archive.

In order to carry them out, the Royal Academy has 41 numerary academicians, among which a Committee of Govern is elected. It also has the necessary contracted personnel.

The Committee of Govern has numerary academicians, honorary, correspondents and super-numeraries. The numeraries enroll to one of the sections, namely, architecture, sculpture, painting, visual arts and music. And they can also be researchers or artists.

All numerary academicians gather in plenary ordinary session the third Wednesday of every month (except July and August). In the plenary, the artistic matters that affect them and those of internal character are discussed, according to the meeting's agenda.

Following the plenary session, the public session takes place, in which different acts can be carried out. The solemnest of them is the joining of a new numerary, in which the members of the Committee of Govern and the recipient wear dark clothes, and the recipient reads his speech and an academician answers to him greeting him. The recipient is given a medal, a diploma and an insignia. If who is joining is an artist, he often gives one of his work of art to the academic museum.

When the reception is of honorary academicians and correspondents, a numerary academician presents them with a brief speech and they then thank him. They are given the diploma and the insignia, and the Capdevila medal to the honorary.

Other public acts consist in the memorial of the academicians passed away recently, tribute to the birth or death of distinguished academicians, conferences, concerts, book presentations, etc.

The Royal Academy also organizes monographic courses about artistic topics, instructed by the academicians themselves.

The Corporation was the heir of academician Josep Ricart Matas. With this legacy it created the Institute of Musicology Josep Ricart Matas, that it manages alongside the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

And in the academic headquarters on the second floor of la Lonja, three foundations are located that are managed from this institution. They are the Güell Foundation, that awards scholarships to young artists and students of the art and music from the Catalonian region; the Picasso- Reventós Foundation, that sponsors studies inspired in the conviction that the art cures; and the Ynglada-Guillot Foundation, that organizes an international drawing contest.

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