The Summer Exhibition grows up, despite Mrs Jones

It may disappoint devotees of the twee and the kitsch but the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition appears to be growing up and going professional.

The Academy insists that Mrs Jones of Wensleydale is as welcome to submit her watercolours of flowers as she ever was, continuing a long tradition that gives amateurs the chance to show their works alongside established artists.

But the 2002 show perseveres with the innovation introduced by Peter Blake, the pop artist, last year of separating the open submissions by members of the public from the elected members of the Royal Academy (RA).

In the new, more professional era, the show has attracted work by younger artists such as Gavin Turk, Rachel Whiteread and Marc Quinn. And for the first time in its 234-year history, the exhibition, which opens on Tuesday, will also feature a video installation.

Bryan Kneale, the Academician in charge this year, said there had always been two ways of curating what has always been a highlight of the social season for ladies of a certain class.

"In the first, you had to get as many pictures in by all and sundry because it helps artists to sell their work. This had the effect of making the Academy shunned by professional artists of great stature because artists are protective of their own reputation," he said.

What he hoped was now being achieved was that even younger artists wanted to exhibit in the show because more of the other artists they respected were taking part.

Gary Hume, 40, who last year became the first Young British Artist to be elected to the RA, was given one gallery to curate, choosing an eclectic range of European artists who would not have contributed to the exhibition otherwise.

Nonetheless, wandering through the galleries, nostalgics will still be able to spot that exotic Summer Exhibition combination of charcoal nudes, a giant sculpture of a cockerel, a couple of stuffed jaguars and a shrine to Elvis.

Most of the works are for sale, with prices ranging from a couple of hundred pounds to £789,000, the price of a piece by the late American artist, Milton Avery. Avery also becomes the first dead artist to appear in the show.

Allen Jones, an RA member who is honoured with a gallery dedicated to his own work, said he finally felt the exhibition was becoming an event in the art calendar as well as the social calendar.

"I think in the past, the Academy show was a giant sketch club and good work was overpowered by mediocre work. When I was a young man I wouldn't have been seen dead in the RA," he said. "Now more seriousness and more quality is imparted by the hanging and if I were an aspiring artist, I would want to show here.

"But the problem with any mixed exhibition in an age where art covers such a multitude of stylistic activity is giving coherence to a room. When you're trying to put blobs and circles and squares next to each other, it's a problem."