The Galleries Show 2002

Behind the scenes, museum exhibitions of contemporary art often function as sophisticated showrooms. They offer blue-chip credibility for the galleries who represent the artists; deals can be done over a glass of something chilled and a handshake at the private view, with no benefit to the hosting institution.

Commercial galleries, on the other hand, are unequivocally there to sell art - the desire to shift product may not be central to their ambience, but nor is it denied or disguised.

Next month, however, the hallowed halls of the Royal Academy will house an event that might seem closer to an art fair than an exhibition. Twenty of London's most fashionable commercial galleries will be given space to display their finest in the Galleries Show 2002.

With its date suffix signalling the hope of a regular event, the Galleries Show 2002 is the brainchild of RA exhibitions secretary Norman Rosenthal and curator Max Wigram, who last collaborated on the Apocalypse show two years ago. If that was seen as shocking because of some of its subject matter - the Chapman brothers' toy figure Nazis undergoing unspeakable tortures is just one example - the Galleries Show is controversial because of its very structure.

It is a cardinal principle of art conduct that our public institutions should be free of commercial taint, which hardly gives them a mandate to hand over space to what are ultimately art dealers and store owners. Of course, some might say this happens all the time in underhand ways. Perhaps this exhibition is simply the most honest manifestation yet of the mechanisms of modern art.

It's also economical programming for the RA. Wigram points out that it receives no public funding at all - which leads to some extraordinarily pragmatic scheduling.

The RA has shown itself to be brilliant at constructing blockbuster exhibitions with limited resources. What this means, basically, is getting someone else to pay. Sensation!, originally an inexpensive filler for the RA in 1997, drew entirely from Charles Saatchi's collection stored only a few miles across town. Thus it was cheap to install and insure, yet it drew more than 300,000 visitors and became one of the most talked-about exhibitions of the 1990s. With the Galleries Show, the savings come from giving each participant responsibility for its own overheads along with control over its allotted space.

In concept, the exhibition is totally transparent in its rewriting of the accepted museums charter - and, I am told, will be shameless about embracing on-the-spot sales. Such candour puts the RA ethically in the clear. But what about the dealers? Cosying up to a public body exposes them to accusations of elitism and insiderism.

The curator has no qualms about the morality of the venture. "There's no conflict of interest," asserts Wigram. "We want to have a direct collaboration with contemporary spaces. Ninety-nine per cent of progress in art takes place in galleries." I am sure that museums won't be too pleased to hear this, but in my view Wigram has a point. Size, structure and the spur of competition mean that commercial galleries can move much more quickly than the institutions when it comes to exhibiting new work.

In order to make their selection, Rosenthal and Wigram sought proposals from 35 galleries across London. Each of the chosen ones will have a single room carved out of the RA's main gallery spaces on the first floor.