--- description: Britain's Royal Academy had a new president. At 71, red-faced Sir Alfred Munnings, a rip-snorting conservative and painter of fine horseflesh, had resigned. Into his strait-laced boots last week... title: Art: Changing the Guard image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [U.S.](/section/us/) # Art: Changing the Guard by [TIME](/author/time/) Dec 19, 1949 5:00 AM CUT by [TIME](/author/time/) Dec 19, 1949 5:00 AM CUT Britain’s Royal Academy had a new president. At 71, red-faced Sir Alfred Munnings, a rip-snorting conservative and painter of fine horseflesh, had resigned. Into his strait-laced boots last week stepped a 70-year-old Irish portraitist named Sir Gerald Kelly. As befitted a president of the huffy, stuffy R. A., Sir Gerald was on the conservative side too, but he expressed his views more gently than Sir Alfred had. To Sir Alfred, modern art was “damned nonsense” (TIME, May 9). Sir Gerald’s judgment: “Some good, some bad and some indifferent, and some . . . danged bad.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6792569/art-changing-the-guard/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6792569/art-changing-the-guard/"},"headline":"Art: Changing the Guard","datePublished":"1949-12-19T05:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T19:10:27.360Z","description":"Britain's Royal Academy had a new president. At 71, red-faced Sir Alfred Munnings, a rip-snorting conservative and painter of fine horseflesh, had resigned. Into his strait-laced boots last week...","url":"https://time.com/archive/6792569/art-changing-the-guard/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME","url":"https://time.com/author/time/"}],"articleSection":"U.S.","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6792569/art-changing-the-guard/","name":"Art: Changing the Guard"}}]}] ```