LONDON.-The Royal Academy of Arts presents Making History: Antiquaries in Britain , 1707 – 2007, on view through December 2, 2007. The exhibition explores the work and achievement of the Society of Antiquaries of London over the past three hundred years since its foundation in the early eighteenth century to the present day. The exhibition consists of 190 works, and showcases for the first time, treasures from Britain ’s oldest Learned Society concerned with the study of the past. It features unique works of art, antiquities and manuscripts of national historical importance, from one of the oldest museum collections in this country, including a Yorkist processional cross recovered from the battlefield of Bosworth (1485), the inventory of Henry VIII’s possessions at the time of his death and an early copy of Magna Carta. Also on show are paintings of ancient sites and landscapes by Constable, Turner, Blake and an extraordinary collection of English royal portraits from Henry VI to Mary Tudor. In addition there are the only surviving visual records of objects long since lost or destroyed.

Making History: Antiquaries in Britain, 1707 – 2007 explores key stages in the creation of Britain’s historical narrative, from the earliest archaeological discoveries of the early modern age to the rise of professional historians and archaeologists in the 20th century and insights into how we might study the past in the future. The exhibition culminates with a special study of Stonehenge, arguably Britain 's best known monument. It reveals how our understanding of its history keeps on changing thanks to the process of research and to new discoveries such as a recently unearthed late medieval drawing of the megaliths, never before seen in this country.