This week Britain is celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee, commemorating the 60th anniversary of her ascension to the throne. As RCA readers know, British royalty also owns one of the greatest art collections in the world. I thought I’d check in to see what she is sharing with us folks, especially as the U.K. will be hosting more than its usual number of tourists this year for the summer Olympics.
The answer, it seems, is less than I would have hoped. The big exhibition that celebrates the Queen’s 60 years on the throne is called Diamonds: A Jubilee Celebration and it’s part of “the Summer Opening of Buckingham Palace (30 June – 8 July & 31 July – 7 October),” which admittedly is nice. The diamond exhibit simply displays how diamonds have been used and worn by British monarchs over the last two centuries. It includes some of the Queen’s personal jewels inherited or acquired during her reign. The most famous piece, the Diamond Diadem, at left, has been worn by the Queen on her journey to and from the State Opening of Parliament since the first year of her reign.
In the Queen’s Gallery, there’s  Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist, which is said to be the largest-ever exhibition of his anatomical work. It includes 87 pages from Leonardo’s notebooks, including 24 sides of previously unexhibited material. One of them shows a “to do” list, in which “Leonardo reminds himself to obtain a skull, to get his books on anatomy bound, to observe the holes in the substance of the brain, to describe the tongue of the woodpecker and the jaw of a crocodile, and to give the measurement of a dead man using his finger as a unit.”
And there’s The Northern Renaissance: Durer to Holbein, which displays about 100 works – prints and drawings by Dürer, mythological paintings by Cranach the Elder, and preparatory drawings by Hans Holbein the Younger as well as finished oil portraits.
 At Windsor Castle, visitors can see The Queen: 60 Photographs for 60 Years, which is exactly as billed, and Treasures from the Royal Library, likewise.Â
But art-lovers may want to make the trip to Scotland, where the royals’ Holyroodhouse Palace is showing Treasures from the Queen’s Palaces, about 100 works reflecting the tastes of several monarchs and other members of the royal family over the centuries. It includes paintings by Rembrandt, Hogarth, Hals, van Dyke and Lotto, among others.
The entire exhibition program is listed here.
And if you’re not going, you can still learn more — the BBC has produced an eight-part series, 30 minutes each, about objects in the Royal Collection. It’s called The Art of Monarchy. You can hear it all and see images here. Transcripts, for those who’d rather read than listen, are there as well. If it’s hafl as good as the Beeb’s A History of the World In 100 Objects, I’d be happy.