Reception piece

In art, a reception piece is a work submitted by an artist to an academy for approval as part of the requirements for admission to membership.

[1] The piece is normally representative of the artist's work, and the organization's judgement of its skill may or may not form part of the criteria for accepting a new entrant.

The requirement to submit a reception or diploma piece is closely related to the practice in the medieval period and later of requiring a craftsman to submit one or more virtuoso or test-pieces to a guild to demonstrate his skill before he was granted membership.

The Royal Academy, London, for instance, at one time limited the number of engravers who could join, and where artistic styles and tastes change, new categories of membership may be created as necessary.

When Antoine Watteau applied to join the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, there was no suitable category for his fête galante works, so the academy simply created one rather than reject his application, describing him as a "peintre des festes galantes".