Past Events

Organised by the Ruskin Art Club of Los Angeles

“The Mystery of Life and Its Arts”, focussing on 18. 176-187
Led by Rachel Dickinson, Master of the Guild of St George
USA Pacific Standard Time 9am – 10.30 am

A celebration of the continuing relevance of Nineteenth Century ideas to the Twenty-first Century, with a focus on Ruskin’s links with Manchester.

14 November: 10-1

Networking session for archivists, curators and librarians working with 19^th century collections. If you are interested in attending this

session, please contact Stephanie Boydell, Curator Special Collections

s.boydell@mmu.ac.uk

1-5

Discussions of contemporary study of collections, including The Guild of St

George, Glasgow School of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum

6-7.30

Performance by Tom Payne of Ruskin’s “The Storm-Cloud of the 19^th Century”

15^th November: 10-12.30

The morning focuses on examples of Community Arts informed by the 19^th Century, and how Manchester’s radical past shapes our present.

1.30-5.15

A showing of Everyone Deserves Space: Ruskin’s Manchester Now

Followed by discussions on Community Arts, Education and Economics

Speakers include Guild of St George Companions Judah Armani, Rachel Dickinson, Aonghus Gordon, Andrew Hill and Arjun Jain, as well as Ruskin Collection Curator Ashley Gallant

The event is free. Participants can register for all or part of the programme.

Register with:

eventbrite.co.uk/e/19th-century-now-tickets-1024920714447?aff=oddtdtcreator

Conversations between Kurt Schwitters, Derek Hyatt and John Ruskin “Emissaries of the Land” is an exhibition of works by Kurt Schwitters (1887- 1948) and Derek Hyatt (1931-2015), curated by Michael Richardson, and first shown at Art Space Gallery, London in 2023.

The “conversation” between these two artists takes an unexpected twist, as it comes to Ruskin’s former home, and Ruskin joins the meeting.  All three artists looked to nature. With his houseguests beside him, Ruskin connects with the generations who have taken his art forward in radical ways, giving Schwitters and Hyatt fresh presence, and drawing from them a similar power.

www.brantwood.org.uk

Reception from 6pm, lecture 7pm

‘One Haunting Conception’: Ruskin, Turner and the Legacy of Trafalgar.

Christine Riding, Director of Collections and Research at the National Gallery

For tickets, see our home page.

Friday 4^th October keynote address at Telescope Studio, with reception.

5^th October six presentations and a panel discussion at the Doheny Library.

For a man who never set foot in America, John Ruskin wielded an outsized influence on art, environmental, and social movements. This is often underappreciated in assessments of Ruskin’s global impact. From the American Pre-Raphaelites to utopian social experiments in Florida, Georgia, and California, Ruskin’s vision inspired many facets of American idealism and social reform. This conference, the first of its kind, will explore Ruskin’s contributions to American movements, thinkers, and culture in the 19th and 20th centuries and suggest ways in which he speaks to the issues of American life today.

www.ruskinartclub.org

Speakers include: Virginia Anderson, Sara Atwood, Gray Brechin, Laura Dason-Wells, Jeremy Melius, Gabriel Meyer,
Sharon Weltmann

Friday 4th October: Telescope Studio, Los Angeles, followed by a Reception

Saturday 5th October: Doheny Library, Los Angeles

www.ruskinartclub.org

With a title taking inspiration from Ruskin, British and American visual and literary artworks by the Romantics, the Pre-Raphaelites, and members of the Arts and Crafts movement are displayed alongside key scientific texts and images, as well as works by early 20th-century preservationists John Muir and Mary Hunter Austin. The exhibition also documents water use and oil extraction in the Los Angeles region in the early 20th century.

Local times vary

The Ruskin Society of North America, Presentation of the Annual Ruskin Lifetime Achievement Award

Honoree: Robert Hewison

Click to Join Zoom Meeting 
Meeting ID: 356 337 0764
Passcode: 0a0S6t

10 to 11.30 Pacific time

Led by Gabriel Meyer of the Ruskin Art Club of Los Angeles

This new exhibition draws on Ruskin’s shell collections and shell paintings in Lancaster University’s Ruskin Whitehouse Collection to explore the technical and philosophical challenges presented by these beautiful enigmatic forms.

In summer, Ruskin’s house, Brantwood, is open every day 10.30am to 5.30pm.

www.brantwood.org.uk

5 – 6:30pm Pacific Daylight Time

Gabriel Meyer, Executive Director of the Ruskin Art Club of Los Angeles

A reflection on the practical application of Ruskin’s ideas to lifestyle choices in the 21 st century, using Ruskin’s ideal of “the sufficient life” – a life of artful simplicity, mastery of life crafts, imagination, and ethically responsible consumption.

Zoom link here

Professor Johnathan Bowen

Full programme here 

Organised by the Guild of St George

Live readings from the essays in Ruskin’s seminal work on political economy, Unto This Last, published in 1862. Join us online for these free events; full details and times here 

Organised by the Guild of St George

Live readings from the essays in Ruskin’s seminal work on political economy, Unto This Last, published in 1862. Join us online for these free events; full details and times here

10-11:30am, Los Angeles Time

Zoom link here

The essay we will be studying together is: ‘Work’; from The Crown of Wild Olive. This essay (1865) outlines the sociological analysis Ruskin lays out with greater range in Unto this Last( 1862). As Derrick Leon writes of the lectures collected in The Crown of Wild Olive: ‘What is important in
Ruskin’s social philosophy, and what gives it value and significance today, … is the fact that it is not an abstraction, but a living organism based upon fundamental principles of a permanent nature. . . True wealth for the individual means one thing alone: his capacity to live a full, awakened life, with all its functions — body, mind, and heart — working at their utmost capacity for his own spiritual satisfaction and for the service of his fellows. True wealth for the nation can consist only in the production of the maximum quantity of such beings’
Please RSVP to the Ruskin Art Club.

This session will focus on Paragraphs 36-51

Please find the link below to the Library Edition pdfs on our
website: ruskinartclub.org/resources

11am UK Time

Organised by the Guild of St George

Live readings from the essays in Ruskin’s seminal work on political economy, Unto This Last, published in 1862. Join us online for these free events; full details and times here

Convenor: Peter Burman, with readers Howard Hull, Olga Sinitsyna and Chiaki Yokoyama ]

No need to pre-book, just join on zoom here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89638124508

2:30-5pm

Tickets are free but you need to be a paid member to attend. If you are unsure as to whether your membership is up to date, please email Jarka at: membership.the.ruskin.society@gmail.com

To book tickets, please use Eventbrite by clicking (or copy-and-pasting) the following link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/birthday-lecture-2024-tickets-799777575257?aff=oddtdtcreator

3-5pm

A party, a short concert featuring Gabriel Meyer’s work for cello – Allan Hon – and piano – Alex Zhu and an extract from the recording of All Great Art Is Praise, the 2019 performance at the Royal Academy, featuring Michael Palin.

The Guild of St George presents four free monthly online readings this winter, centred on John Ruskin’s writings, embracing the following themes:

1. Architecture, carving and sculpture – 9th December 2022
2. Textiles – 13th January 2023
3. Mixed media, including ceramics, plasterwork and silversmithing – 17th February
4. Craftspeople of Venice – 10th March 2022

All are welcome to join us and our distinguished line up of readers.

Zoom sessions with open at 5.45pm (UK Time) for a 6pm start.

Details and Zoom link:  https://www.guildofstgeorge.org.uk/newseventsreviews/guild-events-calendar/ruskin-and-the-crafts

The 9th Annual Ruskin To-Day Brantwood London Lecture will be given by Esme Ward, Director of Manchester Museum, in the Benjamin West Lecture Theatre at the Royal Academy, at 7.00pm Friday 20th October 2023.

“The Future of Museums, renewing and reimagining their creative and civic role” In caring for the past, museums are staking a claim on what matters in the future.  Esme will share experiences and stories rooted in Manchester, grapple with the complexities and challenges facing ‘encyclopaedic’ museums today and propose a more equitable and values-driven approach to care and collections.

This event is free, and complimentary tickets are available at  https://brantwood2023.eventbrite.co.uk

10am

Join Japanese Companions and Ruskinians online for a special event showcasing the range and importance of Ruskinian thought and action in Japan today, particularly focused on the role of Design. The event is free and all contributions will be in English. Further details, and the zoom link:

https://www.guildofstgeorge.org.uk/newseventsreviews/guild-events-calendar/building-the-future-john-ruskin-and-the-new-role-for-design-in-japan

5 -7 pm Pacific Standard Time

Professor Sarah Woods

In a complex world, THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING, Ruskin’s lessons on how to draw, hold valuable lessons about what it is to be human, engaging us with the natural world and principles of creativity that can help us live in a more connected way. This lecture explores how, in truly seeing stones and leaves and landscapes, we can find them reflected in the patterns of our own lives.

Presented by the Ruskin Art Club of Los Angeles

6:30pm

Join Guild of St George Companions Paul Evans, Juliette Losq, Julian Perry and Joanna Whittle alongside Judith Tucker, Chair of Contemporary British Painting and Senior Lecturer in the School of Design at Leeds University to hear more about their painting practices. Details and zoom link for this free event:

https://www.guildofstgeorge.org.uk/newseventsreviews/guild-events-calendar/contemporary-painting-landscape-and-environment-in-the-guild-and-beyond

5 – 6:30PM Pacific Standard Time

With a Reception, and Exhibition of Ruskin Art Club Historical Documents

Given by Professor Dinah Birch

Ruskin’s writing on women was complex, and sometimes contradictory. In the decades immediately succeeding his death, his legacy often inspired women’s growing ambitions to play an active part in public life, for Ruskin had always insisted that they had a right and a responsibility to work – noting, for instance, of Millais’s painting of Tennyson’s “Mariana” (1851) that if he had
painted “Mariana at work in an un-moated grange, instead of idle in a moated one, it had been more to the point – whether of art or of life.”

5 – 6:30 PM Pacific Daylight Time

Gabriel Meyer, Executive Director, Ruskin Art Club of Los Angeles

John Ruskin’s fifth volume of his Modern Painters identified help as the highest and first law of the universe – and the other name of life. In this wide-ranging lecture Gabriel Meyer will examine Ruskin’s law of help and its moral vision of connection, whereby “the intensity of life is also the intensity of helpfulness – completeness of depending of each part upon all the rest.” Meyer will reflect on the fascinating interface of Ruskin’s ideas with contemporary scientific explorations of the “evolution of cooperation”, which critique aspects of Darwinian thought. He will suggest ways in which Ruskin’s “law of help” challenges contemporary mores, with its focus on radical individualism and its attendant ills – social isolation and growing polarisation.

Zoom Link

7:00-9:00pm

Ruskin Society President, Professor Jeffrey Richards will be joined for this occasion by Professor Sir Christopher Frayling, for a discussion of recent portrayals of Ruskin on film and television.

Artist Déidre Kelly links Venice and the Lake District
through the art of lace.

More information can be found here

2:30-4:30pm

The Ruskin Society are delighted to report that our speaker for this occasion will be Dr Stuart Eagles, former Society Secretary, and author of a wonderful book, After Ruskin (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/after-ruskin-9780199602414?cc=us&lang=en&) and numerous other publications.

Stuart will be addressing us on the subject of St George’s Museum, the museum for artisans that Ruskin established in the Sheffield suburb of Walkley. His title is ‘”Sparks blown into flame”: Revisiting Ruskin’s Sheffield Museum’.

The Ruskin Art Club of Los Angeles presents a programme of readings,
toasts and live music to honour the great art and social critic on what
would be his 204th birthday. A highlight of the evening will be a concert
by the award-winning Zelter Quartet led by cellist Allan Hon, performing a
short piece by John Ruskin, followed by Franz-Josef Haydn’s magnificent
String Quartet in G. major, Opus 77. Finally, a short film will be screened:
‘A Tree Walk Through Ruskin Park with John Ruskin’;
A hosted Reception will follow the concert.

Telescope Studio: 2125 Bay Street, Los Angeles, CA 90021 5.30pm – 7.30
pm Los Angeles time

Zoom Link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/1/3563370764?pwd=aVZXTHUySXFXMy9PcHhZ
KOVDRzJQdz09

The event will also be live-streamed here: wwwruskinartclub.org/YouTube

6 pm
For more information please visit: www.thefieldcentre.org.uk/events/book-launch-of-ruskin-today

5pm Pacific Standard Time

Led by Professor Sarah Atwood

Details and Texts: www.ruskinartclub.org

5 pm Pacific Daylight Time

Led by Professor Sarah Atwood

Details and Texts: www.ruskinartclub.org

7pm

Professor Dinah Birch

Ruskin’s relations with universities extended throughout his adult life, and they were often turbulent.  Speaking as a Professor in 1872, he told his Oxford students that a university should be a place ‘where those who wish to be able to think, come to learn to think: not to think of mathematics only, nor of morals, nor of surgery, nor chemistry, but of everything, rightly.’ That’s not how universities are seen today.  Though much has changed since Ruskin’s time as student and then teacher, his challenging views can prompt serious reflection about what goes on in universities, how they are governed and managed, what their future might be, and what it should be.

The lecture will be preceded by a free reception, from 6.00pm

Ruskin To-Day has a limited number of free tickets for this event. Please apply to

brantwood2022.eventbrite.co.uk

Tickets are also for sale via the National Gallery website: nationalgallery.org.uk

In association with Sovereign Films

7pm

Joan Winterkorn “Valuing John Ruskin”

Preceded by a reception at 6.15 and private view of “John Ruskin in the Age of Science” curated by Sandra Kemp, The Ruskin, Lancaster University and Keith Moore, the Royal Society

Register for this event here

9:00am PDT, 12:00pm EDT, 5:00pm GMT

We hope you will join us as we celebrate the Ruskin Society of North America’s 2nd Annual Lifetime Achievement Award on September 24, 2022. This year, we will posthumously honor the great Ruskin scholar Van Akin Burd, whose work is so foundational to Ruskin studies. The live Zoom event will feature tributes from Prof. Burd’s daughter, Joyce Hicks; former student, Chris Leadbeater; and friends and colleagues James L. Spates, Pamela and Howard Hull, and Stephen Wildman.

Please vist: www.ruskinsocietyna.org for more details and to receive a Zoom link

The Economy of Heaven: Ruskin, Capitalism, and the Postcapitalist Future
Associate Professor Eugene McCarraher

Reception: 5:00 p.m. Lecture: 6:00 p.m.

The reception will include a viewing of rare artifacts from the Ruskin ArtClub collections. This event is f ree and open to the public. The lecture portion of this event will be held both in person and online.

To receive either complimentary parking or a Zoom link, please RSVP at:
ruskin2022.eventbrite.com.CONOMY

Ruskin’s exploitation of developments in optical technologies, presented alongside his scientific contemporaries at two locations.

brantwood.org.uk

Ruskin was fascinated by form and pattern, proportion and symmetry, in the world around us. An exploration of 19^th century scientific ideas about the relationship of things and their properties to each other.

brantwood.org.uk

5-7 pm Pacific Daylight Time

Ann Gagné will take a critical look at 20^th and 21^st century media representations of Ruskin and show     how they complicate popular access to Ruskin’s ideas.

An exploration of how Ruskin’s observation and analysis of clouds and skies Paralleled the evolution of climate science.

The start of a series of shows devoted to the theme of Ruskin and Science, jointly presented by Brantwood, The Royal Society, London and The Ruskin Museum and Research Centre, Lancaster University (Lancaster.ac.uk/the-ruskin).

brantwood.org.uk

From the Ruskin Art Club Los Angeles

5-7pm Pacific Daylight Time

Dr Amy Woosden-Boulton

Link: usorweb.zoom.us/…/3563370764

Speaker: Sara S. Hodson
Presented by the Ruskin Art Club of Los Angeles, 5 -7 pm Pacific Standard Time
Zoom link
us02web.zoom.us/…/3563370764

From 10am

More information can be found here

Free art workshop for families with Bonnie Craig

Inspired by John Ruskin and Lancaster’s historic Castle, explore architecture and repeat pattern in this family art workshop with Bonnie Craig.

Bonnie is a Lancaster-based visual artist and designer working mainly with pattern and print.

About

• Everything is free, and everyone is welcome!
• Aimed at ages 6+. Children must be accompanied by an adult.
• Come dressed in clothes that can get messy.

An evening of readings, music and toasts.

Presented on Zoom at 5pm – 7.30pm Pacific Standard Time by the Ruskin Art Club of Los Angeles.

4-7pm

Music from 1:50pm, service starts at 2pm

A service to commemorate the exact 150th anniversary of the death of Margaret Ruskin, née
Cock (2 September 1781-5 December 1871), buried with her husband, John James Ruskin (1785-
1864), in the churchyard of St John the Evangelist.

Minister: The Revd Lu Gale
Organist: Professor Francis O’Gorman

Margaret was the mother of John Ruskin (1819-1900), one of the most important architecture
and art critics of nineteenth-century Great Britain, whose work ranged from economics to
natural history, engraving to political commentary. The thirty-nine volumes of his complete
works (published 1903-12) remain a cornerstone of nineteenth-century critical writing in English.

The Rose Valley Museum and the Decorative Arts Trust are collaborating on a two-day conference celebrating the Arts and Crafts movement in Rose Valley, PA.

Organisers are working to broadcast conference sessions on Zoom. Speakers include: George Thomas (Harvard University); Prof. Jim Spates; Ryan Berley (curator, Rose Valley Museum); Barbara Macklem and Thomas Guiler (director of Musuem Affairs, Oneida Community Mansion House).

For reservations and information, contact Sue Keilbaugh, programs@rosevalleymuseum.org.

7pm, doors open 6.30 pm.

The speaker will be the artist, ceramicist and writer Edmund de Waal, introduced by the Director of the National Gallery, Gabriele Finaldi.

Tickets will go on sale from the National Gallery website on 20th September. A limited number of tickets will be available on application to helen@brantwood.org.uk.

The Lecture is given in association with Sovereign Films.

All at 5pm, 11/4 PDT, 11/11, 11/17 PST.

The series will be led by Professor Jim Spates, emeritus professor of sociology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY.

Thursday, Nov. 4 – will introduce Unto this Last and take up the first essay, “The Roots of Honour”

Thursday, Nov. 11 – will continue with the two middle essays, “The Veins of Wealth” and “Qui Judicatis Terram”

Wednesday, Nov. 17 – will finish up with the last essay, “Ad Valorem”

Links to pdfs of ‘Unto this Last’ with Clive Wilmer’s notes and commentary and the excerpts selected for each of the three sessions are available on the Ruskin Art Club website: www.ruskinartclub.org on the Calendar page events listing.

6pm

An in-person event at The Craft Contemporary Museum (Los Angeles). Brendan Constantine, moderator, with poets: Natalie J. Graham, Sara Borjas, and Douglas Brown. Organised by The Ruskin Art Club.

Visit the website for more details – https://ruskinartclub.org/calendar.

5pm

For more details visit the website – https://ruskinartclub.org/calendar

5pm

For more details visit the website – https://ruskinartclub.org/calendar

6:30pm

https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/ruskins-ecologies-book-launch-event/

Registration is required.

5pm

For more details visit the website – https://ruskinartclub.org/calendar

We invite you to join the Ruskin Society of North America as we celebrate James S. Dearden’s 90^th birthday and award him the first annual Lifetime Achievement Award for the invaluable contributions he has made, and continues to make, to Ruskin Studies.

This live event will take place via Zoom on Saturday, August 14 at 2021, 5 pm GMT; 12 pm EDT; and 9 AM PDT. The program will include an interview with Dr. Dearden. Brief tributes to his work and many achievements will be offered by Clive Wilmer, Stuart Eagles, Robert Hewison, Dinah Birch, Rachel Dickinson, and Paul Dawson.

Join the Zoom Meeting here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3563370764?pwd=aVZXTHUySXFXMy9PcHhZK0VDRzJQdz09

Meeting ID: 356 337 0764
Passcode: 0a0S6t

2pm

Sponsored by the Margate Civic Society to accompany the exhibition “Alexander, Seas and Skies”

Event link:  https://www.themargateschool.com/events/the-enraptured-tourist-ruskin-and-france

Admission Free

9am US Pacific Standard Time

Zoom link to follow

5pm US Pacific Standard Time.

us02web.zoom.us/…/3563370764

5pm (Standard Pacific Time)

Moderator: Professor Jim Spates

Presented by the Ruskin Art Club, Los Angeles

Direct Zoom Link  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3563370764pwd=aVZXTHUySXFMy9PcHhZK0VDRzJQdz09

7pm via Zoom

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81749754808

Join Lecturer Tom Guiler, PHD, Assistant Professor of History and Public Humanities, as he discusses Byrdcliffe, an artist colony founded in 1902 in Woodstock, New York. Byrdcliffe was an important force in the Arts and Crafts movement in America which still functions today and has a rich artistic and social legacy.

5pm

Crafting America, a new exhibition developed by Crystal Bridges, celebrates the skill and individuality of craft within the broad context of American art. From jewelry to furniture to sculptures and more, this exhibition is dazzling and full of surprises.

Featuring over 100 works in ceramics, fiber, wood, metal, glass, and more unexpected materials, Crafting America presents a diverse and inclusive story of American craft from the 1940s to today, highlighting the work of artists such as Ruth Asawa, Beatrice Wood, Shan Goshorn, Nick Cave, and more.This exhibition foregrounds varied backgrounds and perspectives in craft, from the vital contributions of Indigenous artists to the new skills and points of view brought by immigrants to the United States.

Curators Jen Padgett and Glen Adamson, developers of Crafting America, will take us on a virtual tour of this landmark exhibition.

5pm

Speakers: John A. Fiddler and Norman R. Weiss

John Fidler is a British-licensed architect with two additional degrees in building conservation. Until 2006, as Conservation Director of English Heritage in London, he was responsible for technical research, policy development, advisory services, publications, training and outreach. Now based in Los Angeles, Fidler runs a technical consultancy on historic preservation.

Norman R. Weiss is a technical specialist in the analysis and preservation of traditional building materials. He has taught at Columbia University since 1977 and is currently Chair of the Preservation Technology and Training Board of the National Park Service. Trained as an analytical chemist, he is recognised for his more than five decades in the field of architectural cleaning and repair.

Scientific and technological advances prior to Ruskin’s most active period of writing resulted in rapid, dramatic changes in the materials and methods of construction.  Any reconsideration of his architectural theories and opinions requires an understanding of that as context.  – Weiss

Ruskin’s famous Lamp of Memory in The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and the subsequent Stones of Venice (1851-3) greatly influenced subsequent campaigners William Morris and Philip Webb in their Manifesto of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, 1877, and in their quest for the preservation, rather than drastic restoration, of historic buildings and monuments. This legacy has held back critical developments in the field for more than 150 years. – Fidler

A Zoom invitation for the event will be shared by Ruskin Art Club

The historic Ruskin Art Club, Los Angeles has announced a series of online events taking place throughout January and February. These events include the lecture:

‘Regenerative Innovation: Toward a Practical Ecology’ given by Denise Domergue, on February 25th.

They have also organised an online celebration for Ruskin’s Birthday on 11th February, featuring the Zelter Quartet (Thornton School, USC). This special event will feature performances of Haydn’s C-major String Quartet (op. 20, no.2) and Beethoven’s E-minor String Quartet (op. 59, no. 2), along with short readings from Ruskin’s works and a special US musical premiere.

Invitations to each event and zoom links to follow.

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Organised by the Los Angeles Ruskin Art Club, this lecture will be given by Peter Potter, a Roycroft Master Artisan (photography) and will be moderated by Robert Flynn Johnson.

5pm LA Time

Invitations for each event with zoom links will be forthcoming.

Thursdays, Sept. 10, 17, 24 – 5-6:30 [PDT]

Jim Spates, Professor Emeritus of Sociology
Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, New York

with Gabriel Meyer

PLEASE JOIN US FOR THIS IMPORTANT SERIES BY REGISTERING AT info@ruskinartclub.com. We will send registrants the Zoom link for the event.

For more than a century, the “accepted version” of John Ruskin’s life story has been in error. So grave has been the error, Ruskin’s reputation has suffered greatly, along with serious interest in his vital and ever-relevant work.

All the sessions will begin at 5 PM PDT and each presentation will be followed by a Question and Answer period with the audience.

However, we are beginning to get news of possible openings, and will be glad to publicise them once they become definite.

7pm

Tickets: £25

The influence of John Ruskin is far reaching and for each artist, writer, educator and thinker who encounters his work, he means something different. Join friends, world renowned artist Edmund de Waal and Ruskin expert, Professor Tim Barringer, for an intimate conversation about their relationship with Ruskin’s ideas and who they understand him to be in an age of change.

11am

John Peek Conference Room

4.15pm

Dr Fredrik Albritton Jonsson (Associate Professor of British History, University of Chicago) explores fossil fuels, economic growth, and the relevance of Ruskin’s thinking for understanding the ecological concerns of the late nineteenth century as well as those of our own era.

A complex and often contradictory figure, John Ruskin stands as one of the most influential thinkers of the nineteenth century. A pioneering art critic and an accomplished draftsman, he believed that art had the power to transform society and that nature inspired the most meaningful art. Two centuries after his birth, this exhibition, featuring works by J. M. W. Turner, John Everett Millais, Edward Burne-Jones and other leading artists of the nineteenth century, examines Ruskin’s legacy as a social reformer, ecological thinker, and educator.

Unto This Last: Two Hundred Years of John Ruskin features paintings, drawings, and manuscripts largely from collections at Yale University – the Yale Center for British Art and Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library – together representing one of the most important repositories of Ruskin’s work in the United States, much of which is to be exhibited in the UK for the first time.

The exhibition has been curated by three PhD Candidates in Yale University’s Department of the History of Art: Tara Contractor, Victoria Hepburn, and Judith Stapleton; with Tim Barringer, Paul Mellon Centre Professor of the History of Art at Yale; and Courtney Skipton Long, Acting Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Yale Center for British Art.

4.15pm

Dr Suzanne Fagence Cooper (Research Curator, York Art Gallery) will examine the interconnections between Ruskin’s observations of changing Alpine skyscapes and landscapes over 40 years, with his own concerns about personal fragility and decline.

https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/the-ruskin/visit/events/ruskin-seminar-with-suzanne-fagence-cooper

Light refreshments from 5.30pm, talk starts at 6pm

4.15pm – 6.00pm

Dr Marcus Waithe of Magdalene College, Cambridge will speak on ‘Insulting Ruskin: Fors Clavigera and the Uses of Offence’, and the winner of the 2019 Ruskin Society Book Prize will be announced. The shortlist for the 2019 Ruskin Society Book Prize is:

Suzanne Fagance Cooper, To See Clearly: Why Ruskin Matters (Quercus)

Suzanne Fagance Cooper, The Ruskin Revival: 1969-2019 (Pallas Athene)

Robert Hewison, Ruskin and His Contemporaries (Pallas Athene)

Andrew Hill, Ruskinland: How John Ruskin Shapes Our World (Pallas Athene)

Booking is now open. The event is free for members of the Society.  

To book, please register here: https://ruskinbirthday2020.eventbrite.co.uk

All information and list of speakers can be found: https://reilly.nd.edu/news-and-events/ruskin-conference/ 

1pm

Companion Dr Thomas Hughes speaks at the research lunch at the Paul Mellon Centre, London. His subject is: Surface, Depth and Form; John Ruskin’s ‘The Nature of Gothic’.

More details and booking here. Free but booking required.

4.15pm

In her book: ‘Creative States of Mind: Psychoanalysis and the Artist’s Process’ (Routledge 2019), Patricia Townsend writes about the states of mind that artists experience as they journey through the process of making a new artwork. In this talk, Patricia will discuss the main findings of her research and will relate these to her own process of making the moving image work Black Sun.

The moving image artwork Black Sun is featured in ‘Ruskin: Museum of the Near Future’.

https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/the-ruskin/visit/events/ruskin-live-creative-states-of-mind-with-patricia-townsend

Franziska Schenk uses nano-pigment technology developed for the commercial industries. The technology enables Schenk to depict the iridescent colour that formed the centrepiece of Ruskin’s attack on Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Schenk writes, ‘Ruskin’s study of a single iridescent peacock feather showing each individual filament can be seen as an attempt to gain a better understanding of the workings of these mysterious rainbow colours, and to analyse their purpose in the grander scheme of nature, evolution and art. Ruskin urged artists to ‘go to Nature, rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning nothing.’

Franziska Schenk’s work on nature’s iridescent hues and millennia-old colour optics, complemented by scientific study, have led her to adapt and adopt new nano-materials for painting. The resulting artwork, like iridescent creatures, fluctuates in perceived colour and pattern, depending on the light and vantage. Her work, From Mimesis to Biomimetics: Towards Smarter Art, has most recently been presented at Max Planck Institute, Dresden in June 2019

10.15AM-4.30PM

As John Ruskin’s bicentenary draws to a close, you are invited to an exciting day of talks, workshops, and a book launch on the theme of Ruskin and the environment. The event will culminate in the launch of Oak Earth, a chapbook written by the Guardian Country Diarist and Manchester Metropolitan University lecturer Dr Paul Evans. The chapbook was commissioned as part of the HLF and Guild-funded project ‘Ruskin in Wyre’ and written in response to Ruskin Land.

Speakers and workshop leaders include: Dr Rachel Dickinson (Master of the Guild and lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University), Jenny Robbins (Guild director and director of the Wyre Community Land Trust, and Tim Selman (Wyre Community Land Trust) and Dr Jennie Bailey (writer and educator). The day takes place in the beautiful surroundings of Elizabeth Gaskell’s house and, weather permitting, will be in the garden as well as inside.

All participants will receive a free copy of Paul’s new book.

The event is free and has been made possible by generosity of the Guild of St George and Manchester Metropolitan University. BOOK HERE.

This free exhibition presents Hideyuki Sobue’s portrait of John Ruskin alongside new works exploring the Lake District landscape. 

Commissioned for the 2019 bicentenary of Ruskin’s birth, Sobue’s portrait presents Ruskin as a prophet for our contemporary period of ecological crisis.

In partnership with Brantwood. Supported by Arts Council England.

Ruskin Live |Thu 23 Jan | 1630 – 1730 | Free, booking recommended

In this free talk, Lake District artist Hideyuki Sobue introduces the Conversation with Ruskin exhibition.

As a Japanese artist based in the Lake District – where Ruskin spent the last years of his life – Sobue has been intrigued by John Ruskin’s legacy in art and sustainability. Sobue will discuss his art practice, and his Conversation with Ruskin project.

This exhibition explores the potential of drawing as an investigative tool to make meaningful contributions to knowledge outside the arts.

Drawn to Investigate explores the potential of drawing as an investigative tool to make meaningful contributions to knowledge outside the arts. It brings together a range of examples of contemporary drawing with a relationship to ‘scientific’ research.

Drawing is historically associated with knowledge generation and critical investigation in the sciences. This exhibition will examine how drawing today continues to work across the porous boundary between observation and expression, empiricism and invention in a range of investigative practices. ‘Science’ is used in the most inclusive sense, embracing all forms of thorough investigation, spanning anthropology to astrophysics, conservation to mathematics, forensics to zoology. This approach builds on John Ruskin’s advocacy of drawing as a way of seeing and understating the world and his prescient understanding of the impact of industrialisation on the natural environment.

Curated by Sarah Casey and Gerry Davies

https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/the-ruskin/visit/events/drawn-to-investigate

All conference information can be found:

https://www.huntington.org/john-ruskin/

Jim Spates (Professor Emeritus, Hobart and William Smith Colleges) and Dr. Gabriel Meyer (Executive Director, Ruskin Art Club), Coordinators

Speakers include Clive Wilmer (Master of The Guild of St. George), Dr. Sara Atwood (The Guild of St. George and Portland Community College), Gabriel Meyer (President, Ruskin Art Club), Jim Spates (Professor Emeritus, Hobart and William Smith Colleges)

2-2.30pm, 2.45-3.15pm, or 3.30pm- 4pm

Meet in Gallery 21

Come to the Western Art Print Room to explore the work of Victorian polymath, John Ruskin (1819-1900) as part of the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of his birth.

Free, booking essential: www.ashmolean.org/event/print-room-open-doors-ruskin-200

1.00 – 1.45pm

Speaker: Julius Bryant, Keeper of Word & Image Department

The last in a series of four lunchtime lectures at the V&A. Admission free.

More details https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/ObXZoe27/lunchtime-lecture-ruskin-s-favourite-and-most-loathed-works-of-art

5 – 7pm

Join University of Birmingham 19C Centre staff to celebrate the centenary year of John Ruskin’s birth. A panel of short papers offer fresh views on Ruskin, followed by discussion.

https://blog.bham.ac.uk/19cc/2019/03/11/views-on-ruskin/ 

Marcus Bicknell and Margaret Brett

In his bicentenary year, the Sage of Coniston is being remembered for his roles as: social reformer, art critic, gifted artist and champion of Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites, but his interest in music is little known.

In this special event, we shine a light on this, quoting from Ruskin’s own writings and his contemporaries, and illustrating this with music, in the spirit of Michael Berkeley’s popular Radio 3 programme Private Passions.

The programme includes: a newly commissioned work by William Marshall setting Ruskin’s poetry to music, music by Ruskin, Bellini, Berkeley, Mozart, Oakeley, Ravenscroft, Beethoven, Corelli and Mendelssohn.

Michael Berkeley, presenter
Jennifer Witton, soprano
Kieran Rayner, baritone
Emily Sun, violin
Ashley Fripp, piano

General Admission £20
ROSL Members and Friends of ROSL ARTS £16
Students £5

https://www.rosl.org.uk/events/rosl-events/event/1033-ruskin-and-music

1.00 – 1.45pm

Speaker: Sarah Quill

The third in a series of four lunchtime lectures at the V&A. Admission free

More details https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/P7q65PJO/lunchtime-lecture-ruskin-and-the-capitals

Sir Christopher Frayling explores the meanings and associations of ‘craft’ yesterday and today.

Free, booking required

https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/the-ruskin/visit/events/ruskin-and-craft-with-sir-christopher-frayling

Join us for the final celebration event in the Ruskin 200
programme at the Museum with a Victorian-inspired, scientific
soirée of activities.

Learn about John Ruskin’s connections to the Museum, from the
design of the building to the geology collections, as well as his
wide legacy today. Period dress welcome but not essential.

Tickets £5 (includes drink voucher for event bar)
Book your ticket: http://bit.ly/EveningWithRuskin

1.00 – 1.45pm

Speaker: Tristram Hunt, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum

The second in a series of four lunchtime lectures at the V&A. Admission free.

More details https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/O7BadzY5/lunchtime-lecture-ruskin-and-the-idea-of-museum

1.00 – 1.45pm

Speaker: Max Donnelly, Curator, Furniture, Textiles & Fashion

The first in a series of four lunchtime lectures at the V&A. Admission free

More details https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/pdoX9zgN/lunchtime-lecture-ruskin-gothic

10.30am until 5pm (4.00pm on Sunday)

A wide range of quality crafts from around the North West, on display throughout Brantwood house. Crafts include: Ceramics, jewellery, fused & stained glass, felt bags, swill baskets, wood turning, photographs,  silk pictures, cakes and preserves, original artworks, prints and cards.

£2.50 admission for craft fair & house, inclusive. No charge for child admissions.

Join poet Geraldine Green and other Cumbrian creative talent at the annual winter open mic night at the Terrace at Brantwood. Supper at 7pm followed by readings. Open mic slots available. Tickets £14. Pre booking essential.

Reading Group

To join the conversation, come along to our Reading Group. We’ll be looking closely at Ruskin’s own research methods, as well as considering the ways Ruskin responded to the environmental concerns of his own time. Each meeting will focus on a different selection from Ruskin’s collected works, which will be chosen and introduced by a member of the group.

The Ruskin Seminar Reading Group will take place at The Ruskin, on 7 and 28 November 2019, and 30 January and 27 February 2020, 16:15 – 18:00. To receive Reading Group updates please email the-ruskin@lancaster.ac.uk and we will add you to the mailing list.

We celebate the launch of a new publication on Thursday 31 October at Ruskin Live: Sophie Thérèse Ambler with Nicholas Vincent. ‘The Song of Simon de Montfort: England’s First Revolutionary and the Death of Chivalry’ is written by Sophie Thérèse Ambler, Lecturer in Later Medieval History at Lancaster and Deputy Director of the CWD. The book will be introduced by Nicholas Vincent, Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia and a Fellow of the British Academy.

In partnership with the Lancaster University Centre for War and Diplomacy.

The evening will begin at 5.30pm and is free to attend (online booking required).

Mark Frost, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Portsmouth, joins us to present the second Ruskin Seminar of 2019/20, on his research into waterways and ecocrisis in Victorian Britain, titled ‘Divine and Defiled Waters – Ruskin, the Wandel, and Victorian Ecocrisis’.

Please note, Mark’s seminar will take place in Bowland North, SR06.

Seminars begin at 4.15pm and are free to attend (online booking required).

6.00-7.15pm

On Wednesday 23 October, join us for Ruskin Live: Jane Beck, who will introduce the textiles she has loaned to The Ruskin from her private collection. This event celebrates the first in a series of exhibitions connecting Ruskin’s ideas to other artists, designers and makers, in his time and our own.

In partnership with Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts.

The evening will begin at 6.00pm and is free to attend (online booking required).

Professor Dinah Birch and Professor Francis O’Gorman will deliver a dinner talk on ‘Remembering John Ruskin: A Great Athenian’ at the Athenaeum Club, Pall Mall, London. Items from the Club’s Library by and about John Ruskin will be exhibited in the Drawing Room and the Smoking Room display cases.

Members and their guests only

The 2019/20 Ruskin Seminars will explore the relevance of Ruskin’s thinking to topics ranging from ecological crisis to evolutionary theory.

The series opens on Friday 18 October with artist and researcher Franziska Schenk, who casts a close eye on Ruskin’s nature-centric artwork to extend the Victorian’s vision into the contemporary nano-realm in ‘Close Looking – Nature’s Microcosm as seen through Ruskin’s Lens’.

Seminars begin at 4.15pm and are free to attend (online booking required).

Come and join Pippa Little and Geraldine Green on a 4-day residential poetry course at Brantwood, Coniston Cumbria, former home of John Ruskin. Brantwood is beautiful at any time of year and autumn in the Lakes is especially magical. Using a variety of writing prompts and stimuli new writing will be produced in a safe and friendly environment. There will be an opportunity for group feedback at the end of each session and one-to-one tutorials with Geraldine and Pippa. There’ll also be time to enjoy your own quiet writing time, if you choose.  Pippa and Geraldine will give a reading on Friday evening and you’re all welcome to read a poem or two on Saturday evening when the group give a reading to the tutors.  Residential and non-residential options are available.  Friday 2.00pm – Monday 2.00pm.  £285 per person

More details https://sites.google.com/a/unive.it/ruskin2019venezia/ 

£25 Booking Essential | Book Here | Adults only

Join us for an afternoon poetry workshop inspired by the beautiful surroundings of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House. Taking inspiration from John Ruskin’s ideas about observation, and in honour of our Ruskin exhibition, you will use the exquisite features of the House and garden to write original pieces of poetry based on focused contemplation. Led by poet Rachel Sills, the 3-hour workshop will include the opportunity to explore the House, and to share your work (if you like) for feedback. Afternoon workshop, 12 – 3pm

The Big Draw Awards Ceremony will take place on the 28th September, and a family day will follow on the 29th.

Further information can be found at www.thebigdraw.org.launch-2019

The Museum of the Near Future explores the contemporary relevance of Ruskin’s drawings, paintings and photographs, notebooks, sketchbooks and diaries, through the dynamic interplay of past, present and future.

Ruskin’s motto was ‘Today’. He believed that the way we see things now will shape the way we think and behave in the future. His concerns about the dehumanising effects of technology, and impact of industrialisation on the health of the planet, speak powerfully to our own era.

‘Ruskin: The Museum of the Near Future’ explores the relevance of Ruskin’s thinking today. Through image and word, his works take us into the nature of seeing and into the multidimensional nature of knowledge itself. Parables and places for imaginative encounters, they reflect our relationship, both modest and magnificent, to the world in which we live.

In partnership with Brantwood, John Ruskin’s home in the Lake District.

This conference aims to celebrate the life and work of John Ruskin during his bicentenary. This two-day event will create a space for theologically engaged conversations about Ruskin, religion and the arts. We seek to focus on Ruskin’s religious and aesthetic writings informed by his relationship with Christianity, as well as examine his influence on those within the Victorian art world, specifically the Pre-Raphaelites.

https://www.visualtheology.org.uk/booking/ 

Artists of interest may include: Stanhope, Rossetti, Millais, Burne-Jones, Beardsley

7 pm

A keynote address as part of the Art for the Nation, John Ruskin, Art Education and Social Change conference

10am – 5pm

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/calendar/art-for-the-nation-john-ruskin-art-education-and-social-change 

Art for the Nation: John Ruskin, Art Education and Social Change’ is a two-day conference scheduled for 20-21 September 2019, hosted at the National Gallery, and organised by Susanna Avery-Quash (National Gallery) in partnership with Janet Barnes, a former Director of the Guild of St. George. The conference forms part of a collaboration with the Ruskin Foundation, whose annual lecture will be given by Prof Robert Hewison (Chair, Ruskin To-day), at the National Gallery on the Friday evening of the conference.

The conference will look specifically at Ruskin’s interactions with, influence on and legacy for the museum world and art education. The conference will look at the extent Ruskin was working alongside or outside the British art establishments well as the contribution
Ruskin made to the emerging discipline of art history, including canon formation, formal criticism and other genres such as exhibition guides. A further, crucial set of issues will address Ruskin’s ongoing legacy, including the reception of his writing about artists and curating, and art in relation to social, environmental and economic questions. We will ask what can his ideas teach future generations of museum goers, artists, curators and funding bodies?

The two day conference is directed towards academics (established and emerging), art professionals and the general public, especially those interested in Ruskin, Italian Renaissance art, British 19th-century art, art education, and the history of museums. The conference will be structured around the themes: Art Education and Museums, British Art and Photography, Language and Writings and Ruskin Today.

All enquiries to Susanna Avery-Quash, National Gallery: Susanna.Avery-Quash@ng-london.org.uk

Tickets and Information can be found: www.holytrinityartsandcrafts.org

7.30pm (doors open at 7.00pm).  Tickets £7 (includes glass of wine on arrival).  Pre-talk supper can be booked in advance by email theterrace@brantwood.org.uk.

Through his Talk, Hideyuki will explore the relevance of John Ruskin’s legacy to our contemporary context, and consider his exhibition in the light of that.

A one day hands-on workshop to explore some techniques that Sally uses when painting flowers with watercolour. Time in the gardens with the flowers, with huge views across Coniston Water in a peaceful and calming setting. Painting in the airy loft house studio with large vases of cut flowers. If it’s raining please bring a hooded rain coat and walking boots or wellies.  10.00am – 5.00pm.  £70 per person

9.45am-6.30pm

In her review of Ruskin’s ‘Modern Painters 3’, George Eliot writes: ‘The truth of infinite value that he teaches is realism- the doctrine that all truth and beauty are to be attained by a humble and faithful study of nature, and not by substituting vague forms, bred by imagination on the mists of feeling, in a place of definite, substantial reality.’

Through the nineteenth-century, Ruskin, Eliot and a number of Victorian reformers sought to clarify the divine and human sources of, and the connections between, goodness, truth, and beauty. This conference will offer the opportunity to explore how belief in the inextricability of these concepts informed understandings of the self, the other, and the world and to investigate the shifts in perception witnessed later in the century.

The conference will include plenary lectures from Andrew Tate (Lancaster) and Rachel Dickinson (Manchester Metropolitan University). The conference is free to attend, but please reserve a ticket below. In addition, please inform Lizzie Ludlow of any dietary requirements before 29th August.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/goodness-truth-beauty-in-the-work-of-john-ruskin-and-his-contemporaries-tickets-66247559233

Informed and inspired by ideas of chaos and order, control and surrender, Russell Mills will exhibit new mixed media works and an ‘aleatoric’ soundwork, made specifically for Brantwood. Mills creates works that mirror and explore many of Ruskin’s ideas about nature: as matter, as force, as school, as metaphor for transformation, and as being profoundly political and economic.

Russell studied at Canterbury, Maidstone and the Royal College of Art. His work encompasses painting, installation, sound, film, and design for contemporary dance and music. He has worked with Brian Eno, Nine Inch Nails, David Sylvian and Peter Gabriel amongst many others.

2pm

Speaker: Prof Stephen Wildman

2-3pm

Lecture Theatre

Speaker: Stephen Wildman Emeritus Professor of History of Art, Lancaster University

Ruskin’s visit to Sicily in the spring of 1874 was the furthest he ever travelled.  This talk will consider both his interest in its sights as well as a little-known personal attachment to Amy, daughter of Henry Yule, who had retired to Palermo in 1864.

£8/£7/£6

Booking www.ashmolean.org/tickets or 01865 278112 or in person at the Ashmolean shop.

10am-4pm

Tickets: £55 | Book here | Limited to 15 spaces

Drawing on the inspiration of Ruskin our much-loved workshop, led by urban sketcher Liz Ackerley, will teach you how to capture special places using pen, pencil, watercolour and other simple materials in a sketchbook. From drawing special items like lamps and furniture, to details, features and views, this day workshop will give you the skills and tools to get started, in the delightful historic setting of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House. As well as creating line drawings, textures, and adding creative colour, you will also have fun recording your visit in a sketchbook, and will take away useful tips and tricks for future sketching.

During this mid-summer workshop, you’ll have the chance (weather permitting!) to get out into the glorious garden for inspiration too.

To celebrate John Ruskin’s bicentennial year, this exhibition looks at John Ruskin’s connections with the local area, based on his associations with three residents: George Allen, Sir John Lubbock and Charles Darwin. The central hub of these was Sunnyside, Tubbenden Lane, Orpington, the home and business address of George Allen.

Sobue will create a portrait installation of Ruskin calling forth his love of nature, his spirituality and the conflicting sensitivities of this visionary man.

1-3pm

Family Friendly event | £1 per child. Usual admission for adults (£4/£5)

Inspired by Ruskin’s focus on close observation of nature, this workshop will involve looking closely at sea shells, feathers and leaves (the latter from the garden at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House) using magnifying glasses, and drawing on sketch paper in pencils and pen.

7.30pm

A special event of the Lake District Summer Music Festival

www.ldsm.https://www.ldsm.org.uk/international-festival/2019-08-04-ruskin-and-musicorg.uk

1-3pm

Family Friendly | £1 per child. Usual admission for adults (£4/£5)

Children and their adults can try this traditional craft, using wool, ribbon and thread to create rustic artworks using twigs and cardboard looms.

Patricia and Mike have worked together for over twelve years and share a love of the Lake District and a visionary approach to interpreting the landscape with their different mediums.

To quote Ruskin  “Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth”

Exhibiting paintings and photographs together is not really known in England, but it has long been a tradition in other countries, particularly America where, in the 291 Gallery in New York (early 20th century), as the Arabian Nights). Young Ali Baba stumbles across an enchanted cave when he overhears the magic words that open it: “Open Sesame!” Inside the cave he finds and steals untold amounts of gold and jewels. But what will he do when the Robber King comes looking for revenge? The show is notable for the most riotously funny scene Illyria has created in its 28 year history, where one character polishes off all the thieves – yes, all 40, and you get to count each one!

£1 per child. Usual admission for adults (£4/£5)

All welcome, family-friendly workshop

Inspired by Ruskin’s writing and painting featuring clouds, families will enjoy some cloud spotting, and write poems based on what they’ve observed. There will also be the chance to paint some clouds using cotton wool.

10am

Learning Studio

This workshop celebrates the 200^th Anniversary of John Ruslin through drawing. First Vview original works in the Print Room, followed by a practical workshop exploring the techniques andn materials used by Ruskin.

£85/£80/£75

Booking www.ashmolean.org/tickets 01865 278112 or in person at the ashmolean shop.

Meet: Manchester Art Gallery, 11am.
Booking: Please press here to book with eventbrite.

6-7:30pm

19th-century artist, critic and social reformer John Ruskin said “I perceive that Manchester can produce no good art and no good literature”. In his eyes, this city saw the price of everything and the value of nothing – not grasping art’s true potential as a tool for social change and for the development of an ethical society. In 2019, his bicentenary year, what does Manchester have to say to this influential but controversial thinker’s ideas? Pose your questions to the new Director of Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth, Alistair Hudson, and Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera, who have responded to some of Ruskin’s challenges by proposing to “put art to use” through the movement of Arte Útil. Hosted by Tunde Adekoya, Director of Big People Music, this lively debate will be an opportunity to ask important questions about art, power and society.

Book online

Held in the setting of Brantwood’s lakeside meadow. Bring your own seating. Gates open at 6pm. Show starts at 7pm.  Performance will last circa 2h 20m including a 20 minute interval. Adults £12.00. Children & students £8.00. Coniston Launch will be running a ferry service to and from the performance, leaving Coniston Boat landings at 6.15pm and returning after the performance.  Adults £3, children £1.50.  Ferry must be booked in advance through Brantwood box office.

Shakespeare’s final play, is also believed by many to be his finest comedy, presented in Illyria’s slick, physical and imaginative style. A magician marooned on an island with his daughter conjures up a storm to shipwreck his enemies on the shore of the island. Which is greater – his desire for revenge or his aptitude for forgiveness?

More information can be found www.ruskinprize.co.uk

Dawn Scything – (6am – 9am) – Help cut part of our wildflower meadow – experienced mowers welcome. Breakfast provided at 9am.  Free event.  Please confirm your attendance by contacting the Estate Team on estate@brantwood.org.uk.  Meet in Brantwood car park.

In July 1857 John Ruskin came to Manchester to deliver A Joy Forever, a pair of lectures presented over two evenings. These lectures, subtitled The Discovery and Application of Art and The Accumulation and Distribution of Art, will be re-enacted at The Portico Library and Manchester Art Gallery respectively during the Ruskin in Manchester bicentenary festival. Actor and art historian Paul O’Keeffe will perform these original lectures in two of the most important architectural treasures remaining from Victorian Manchester.

Sponsored by Ruskin in Manchester, Guild of St. George and Manchester Metropolitan University.

The second lecture, The Accumulation and Distribution of Art, will be held at Manchester Art gallery, Saturday 13th July 2019 at 12pm.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ruskin-lecture-re-enactment-the-discovery-and-application-of-art-tickets-60125288356

2.15pm

Speaker: John Blewitt

John Ruskin was a major influence on William Morris but many of Ruskin’s political views were decidedly conservative. Morris was a libertarian eco-socialist who imagined a utopian future with no masters and no hierarchies; Ruskin looked at the laissez faire capitalism of his day and yearned to recreate social relationships characterised by a reciprocal bond between wise masters who would look after their godly and honest workers. This lecture will explore their contrasting socio-political visions.

John Blewitt is a Distinguished Fellow of the Schhumacher Institute and a member of the William Morris Society.

Tickets for the lecture are £12/£10 (member)/£5 (student)

SPECIAL OFFER: book for all three William Morris Society lectures at the special rate of £30/£25 (member)/£12 (student)

Free, no need to book

‘Perfectly painted’ or ‘catastrophe’? Join Manchester Art Gallery’s curator Hannah Williamson for a gallery tour to consider what Ruskin had to say about works in Manchester’s collection.

11:30am  – 12:1pm

Free, no need to book

‘Perfectly painted’ or ‘catastrophe’? Join Manchester Art Gallery’s curator Hannah Williamson for a gallery tour to consider what Ruskin had to say about works in Manchester’s collection.

11am – 12pm

Cristina Rodrigues is a Portuguese creator with an important history of exhibitions in national and international art centres, who has developed absolutely personal works of art that go beyond the prevailing fashions.  This artist exhibition and talk presented at the Special Collections in Manchester enables the viewer to contemplate a careful selection of Cristina Rodrigues’ works. During the talk, the different symbolic reasons and artistic procedures that this creator develops will be explained. Embroideries, drawings, paintings, sculptures and installations, arranged with an adjusted installation criterion, offer a very seductive aesthetic Horizon. https://cristinarodrigues.co.uk

Tickets: Free – Just turn up.

Celebrating the bicentenary of Victorian writer artist and social thinker John Ruskin’s birth (1819-1900), this exhibition is inspired by ‘The Unity of Art’ lecture he gave at the Manchester School of Art (1859). It considers the importance of art education, introduces Ruskin and his role in popular culture, and traces the influence of Ruskinian Gothic on Manchester’s architecture and culture.

This is part of the Festival of Ruskin in Manchester 2019. The festival and exhibition will form part of the REF2021 impact case study on Gothic, and Dickinson is a member of CELL.

The exhibition has been curated by Dr Rachel Dickinson, Principal Lecturer in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University and Director of Education of Ruskin’s Guild of St. George. Rachel is Principal Lecturer in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, where she has taught across the English curriculum from medieval through to twenty-first century literature. Her approach to the gothic is through Ruskinian Gothic as theorised by Victorian polymath John Ruskin. His gothic is multidisciplinary, and so is her research, which includes architecture, art, dress, education, life-writing, sustainability and textiles, all framed through Ruskinian Gothic. She is the author of John Ruskin’s Correspondence with Joan Severn (Legenda/Routledge) and serves on editorial boards, including the Journal of Victorian Culture (OUP). Passionate about engagement, she is Director of Education for Ruskin’s Guild of St George, regularly gives public lectures and talks on Ruskin, was named a judge of the John Ruskin Prize for Art 2017 and 2019, and is co-ordinator of the Festival of Ruskin in Manchester 2019.

How does place influence your poetry? How do we create poems that are anchored in the senses yet are free to explore inner or imagined places? Imagination-based poetry moves away from the traditional approach to writing poetry and, through dreams, the unconscious and surrealism, allows the writer to create space for the imagination to explore, invent and roam.

Workshops will comprise a series of writing prompts and a variety of stimuli enabling you to create new poems in a supportive environment. There will be time for group and tutor feedback as well as one to one tutorials. Some sessions will take place outdoors. * Non-residential option available.  All materials and refreshments provided.  Mon 2.00pm – Wed 2.00pm.  £255 per person

2.15pm

Speaker: Professor David Faldet and Dr Sara Atwood

Professor David Faldet (Luther College, Iowa) and Dr Sara Atwood (Portland State University, Oregon) will be discussing with Dr John Blewitt the reasons why many Americans find John Ruskin and William Morris relevant and interesting today. Topics will include the arts and crafts movement the environment, education, gender, social economics and what William Morris would make of Iowa today.

Both Dr Atwood and Professor Faldet are contributors to William Morris and John Ruskin: A New Road On Which the World Should Travel, published by the University of Exeter Press for the William Morris Society and edited by John Blewitt in celebration of the bicentenary of John Ruskin’s birth.

Tickets for the lecture are £12/£10 (member)/£5 (student)

SPECIAL OFFER: book for all three William Morris Society lectures at the special rate of £30/£25 (member)/£12 (student)

Free, no need to book

‘Perfectly painted’ or ‘catastrophe’? Join Manchester Art Gallery’s curator Hannah Williamson for a gallery tour to consider what Ruskin had to say about works in Manchester’s collection.

2.15pm

Speaker: Professor Robert Hewison

John Ruskin and William Morris were born a generation apart. They were both wealthy men (at least to start with) but their political paths diverged. In this lecture Professor Hewison will ask what it was that Morris found in Ruskin that was so important to him, and why he should create a masterpiece of the Arts & Crafts movement, his reprint of Ruskin’s “Nature of Gothic”, in Ruskin’s honour.

Robert Hewison is one of the world’s leading scholars on Ruskin and is currently an Honorary Professor at the Ruskin Centre, Lancaster University. As well as publishing a number of books on Ruskin, he has written widely on British cultural history.

Tickets for the lecture are £12/£10 (member)/£5 (student)

SPECIAL OFFER: book for all three William Morris Society lectures at the special rate of £30/£25 (member)/£12 (student)

https://bmi.org.uk/event/wenlock-abbey-through-a-victorian-window-in-the-cloisters-with-artists-politicians-writers-thinkers-eccentrics-with-dr-cynthia-gamble-and-william-motley/

Medieval Wenlock Abbey/Priory nestles on the edge of the picturesque market town of Much Wenlock, in rural Shropshire. In this richly illustrated talk/double act, Dr Cynthia Gamble and William Motley reveal and bring to life some of the secrets of Wenlock Abbey/Priory and its central role in the 19th and 20th  centuries as a cultural hub steeped in the Arts and Crafts Movement. Discoveries include magnificent oratory linen curtains inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites and medieval missals; Angeli laudantes; tiles, screens and wrought-iron gates. The chatelain Charles Milnes Gaskell also had a fine library with several rare editions published by the Kelmscott Press. Guests included Philip Webb, J. Starkie Gardner, Henry James, Henry Adams, Thomas Hardy, Robert and Caroline Bateman and many other fascinating people.

Ticket price includes Victorian afternoon tea at 4pm.

Dr Bernard Richards and Dr Selby Whittingham

Free event but reserve through selbywhittingham@hotmail.com

This event is part of Ruskin in Manchester which will celebrate the legacy of John Ruskin (1819-1900) in Manchester, in the year that marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of this visionary thinker, with a programme of public events taking place across summer 2019.

As an artist, writer, social reformer, philanthropist and ecologist, Ruskin’s is a legacy that shapes our world and lives in so many ways. Whilst Ruskin was troubled by the pollution and poor working conditions he found in 19th century Manchester, he would come to have a strong association with the city and influence the changes that took place to address such issues.

Supported by the Guild of St George (the education charity founded by Ruskin in 1871) and Manchester Metropolitan University, Ruskin in Manchester will see cultural organisations across the city partnering to explore the world of Ruskin through exhibitions, talks and activities.

2-2:45pm

Book here

Award-winning journalist Andrew Hill first saw Ford Madox Brown’s ‘Work’ when he visited Manchester Art Gallery as a teenager. The painting inspired a lifelong interest in Victorian art and society , and spawned a play, articles – including a recreation of ‘Work’ for the Financial Times – and his new book ‘Ruskinland’, about the life, ideas and lasting influence of John Ruskin. In Ruskin’s bicentenary year, Hill will talk about how the prescient ideas of Ruskin, Brown and others can show us how to work and see better today. Andrew will be available afterwards to sign copies of his book.

10:30am – 12:30pm

For ages 13-25

Explore the city through photography. Taking time to really slow down and notice the details that often pass us by in our busy lives.

Part of ‘Manchester’s Festival of Ruskin’ 19th Century art critic John Ruskin had an unusual history with Manchester, he deplored the over industrialised nature of the city and famously wrote ‘I perceive that Manchester can produce no good art and no good literature.’ A close friend of our namesake Thomas Horsfall, Ruskin approved of the theory behind Horsfall’s artistic endeavours in the city but implored him to spend his ‘artistic benevolence on less recusant ground’ than Manchester.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ancoats-photography-walk-tickets-60819963147#tickets

Cumbria Youth Dance Company

Cumbria YDC, in collaboration with Wired Aerial Theatre, will create a suite of unique site-specific, bungee-assisted and aerial performance works referencing Ruskin’s love of mountains. Dancers will work on the Cumbrian fells and in the studio to explore the transition between vertical & horizontal, producing 3 unique pieces of choreography for sharing in the grounds at Brantwood.  The works will also feature at Lakes Alive festival in September 2019, on stage at The Lowry as part of U.Dance NW 2019 and on screen at Kendal Mountain Festival as part of their Special Film Screenings in November 2019.

7:30pm

The Portcullis Trust welcomes FT Andrew Hill to talk about Ruskinland – his latest book on the eminant Art Historian John Ruskin.

All proceeds go to supporting disadvantaged students at RHACC Ruskinland: How John Ruskin Shapes Our World, by Andrew Hill

When Andrew Hill discovered Ruskin’s social criticism in 2009, he immediately saw the parallels with the debate raging about the causes and consequences of the financial crisis and wrote in the Financial Times about the lessons found in Ruskin’s work.

In Ruskinland, he builds on Ruskin’s pin-sharp appreciation of art and architecture, his extraordinary draughtsmanship, and his insistence that to see and draw the world is the best way to understand it better. This vision has new relevance in the age of YouTube and Instagram, while Ruskin’s radical ideas have fresh relevance to how we run our lives, our governments, our museums, our galleries and our companies.

Andrew Hill is an Associate Editor and Management Editor of the Financial Times. He writes a weekly column on business, strategy and leadership, as well as contributing longer features, videos and podcasts and appearing regularly at conferences and on panels. He was named Business Commentator of the Year 2016 in the Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards. He is also the author of Leadership in the Headlines (2016).

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-portcullis-trust-how-john-ruskin-shapes-our-world-tickets-60267674236

Ruskin’s engagement with the creative arts, including fine art, architecture and writing, has led him to become one of the most influential figures of the nineteenth century. His significance endures today, and to celebrate his work and continuing importance in creative work in the 21st century 200 years after his birth, MIVSS and Birmingham City University with the support of BAVS present a one-day interdisciplinary conference aimed at researchers including post-graduates in all disciplines.

The event will include keynote addresses from Dr Colin Trodd (Manchester) and Professor Sandra Kemp (Director, Ruskin Library Lancaster), a range of panels, a workshop on teaching Ruskin, an opportunity to examine early Birmingham School of Art work inspired by Ruskin, and a ‘re-reading group’, which will encourage discussion and close reading. An exhibition of student art work inspired by Ruskin will also be on display, and the event will close with a drinks reception and poetry reading in the exhibition space.

4:15pm-6pm

Speaker: Catherine Spooner and Andrew Tate

How do the ideas of John Ruskin anticipate and intersect with Steampunk subcultures? Defined by Jeff Vandermeer as ‘a grafting of Victorian aesthetic and punk rock attitude onto various forms of science-fiction culture,’ Steampunk is more often associated with the literary legacies of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe. Yet this idiosyncratic contemporary mode of narrative, art, dress and music also has deep affinities with Ruskin’s critique of the ethics and aesthetics of consumer culture.

Ruskin’s alternative vision to industrial capitalism is one of liberating creativity. It is both utopian and rooted in the everyday and anticipates the rich complexity of Steampunk. This seminar series, organised with Prof Catherine Spooner and Dr Andrew Tate (Department of English Literature & Creative Writing, Lancaster University) will explore ways in which Ruskin and Steampunk share a radicalism that has been forgotten and, on occasion, made safe and easy to consume. In Ruskin, it seeks an inspiration for the radical ‘DIY’ practices of the artists and makers of contemporary Steampunk, and thus a critical voice that is still of vital relevance today. In Steampunk, it seeks an heir to a nineteenth-century intellectual tradition, but also a diverse range of critical voices that can speak back to and critique that tradition, opening it up to new directions.

Ruskin and Steampunk: Recovering Radicalism places its two subjects in conversation, allowing points of synergy and tension to emerge, illuminating both in the process. Addressing themes such as political commitment, embodiment and the environment, it draws on Ruskin’s spirit of social and imaginative transformation in order to envisage radical alternative futures.

https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/events/ruskin-seminar-ruskin-vs-steampunk-catherine-spooner-and-andrew-tate-lancaster-university

A display of pots from the Mingei (folk crafts) tradition and its Ruskin connections featuring work by Ogata Kenzan, Shoji Hamada, Bernard Leech, Tomoo Hamada, Edward Hughes and Miles Martin Moore.

Blue Gallery, Brantwood

Tomoo Hamada, potter and grandson will open the show with a talk about his grandfather, renowned potter Shoji Hamada. This will take place in the Severn Studio, Brantwood

Also on  15^th May 2019 there will be a JapaneseTea Ceremony & Presentation. Celebrating the friendship of Japan and Great Britain through the inspirational legacy of John Ruskin, the Urasenke Foundation will present and demonstrate the ancient Japanese art of tea. This will take place at the Brantwood Coach House

 www.ruskin-morris-center.ecnet.jp

More information can be found https://www.ruskinprize.co.uk/ 

4:15pm to 6:00pm

Speaker: Martin Danahay

How do the ideas of John Ruskin anticipate and intersect with Steampunk subcultures? Defined by Jeff Vandermeer as ‘a grafting of Victorian aesthetic and punk rock attitude onto various forms of science-fiction culture,’ Steampunk is more often associated with the literary legacies of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe. Yet this idiosyncratic contemporary mode of narrative, art, dress and music also has deep affinities with Ruskin’s critique of the ethics and aesthetics of consumer culture.

Ruskin’s alternative vision to industrial capitalism is one of liberating creativity. It is both utopian and rooted in the everyday and anticipates the rich complexity of Steampunk. This seminar series, organised with Prof Catherine Spooner and Dr Andrew Tate (Department of English Literature & Creative Writing, Lancaster University) will explore ways in which Ruskin and Steampunk share a radicalism that has been forgotten and, on occasion, made safe and easy to consume. In Ruskin, it seeks an inspiration for the radical ‘DIY’ practices of the artists and makers of contemporary Steampunk, and thus a critical voice that is still of vital relevance today. In Steampunk, it seeks an heir to a nineteenth-century intellectual tradition, but also a diverse range of critical voices that can speak back to and critique that tradition, opening it up to new directions.

Ruskin and Steampunk: Recovering Radicalism places its two subjects in conversation, allowing points of synergy and tension to emerge, illuminating both in the process. Addressing themes such as political commitment, embodiment and the environment, it draws on Ruskin’s spirit of social and imaginative transformation in order to envisage radical alternative futures.

4-6pm

This rare 15” bronze statuette of Ruskin was made by the American civic sculptor Gutzon Borglum (of Mount Rushmore Monument fame) after an 1897 visit to Ruskin at his Brantwood estate. Borglum called Ruskin “the most marvelous, magnificent, unappreciated genius the world has ever known.” The statue shows an aged Ruskin, seated, enfolded in a blanket, near the end of his life (Ruskin died in 1900). On his return to America in 1903, Borglum, who until that time had been principally known as a painter, modeled his statue of Ruskin for the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired a cast of the statue in 1906 and the Detroit Institute of Art added a cast to its collection in 1919. It appears that Borglum had six statuettes cast by Gorham in this first edition, most of which are now in private hands. There is some uncertainty about the number of casts, and there are later editions (e.g., Roman Bronze Works, also 1903).

 The exhibition will include a lecture on the Borglum statue by Ruskin Art Club executive director, Gabriel Meyer. Mr. Meyer’s remarks will also include a brief survey of Ruskin’s impact on American art and social movements at the turn of the 20^th century.

A reception will follow the lecture and discussion. The event is free and open to the public. To RSVP, email us at: info@ruskinartclub.com.

Tea and cakes 3.30, Lecture 4.15

Speaker: Prof Robert Hewison

Organised by the Friends of the Ashmolean Museum

11am

Speaker: Sarah Quill

Themed this year to mark the bicentenary of John Ruskin, the Anglia Ruskin University Sustainability Art Prize and Exhibition will take place in the main Ruskin Gallery.

Admission Free

A seminar to mark the 200th anniversary of John Ruskin’s birth, with a discussion on beauty and socialism – and what place this tradition has in left-wing politics and policy today.

Speakers: Professor Dinah Birch CBE, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Cultural Engagement and Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool, Jon Cruddas, MP for Dagenham and Rainham, Lord Glasman
Labour Peer and Director of the Common Good Foundation, Tristram Hunt, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and former Labour MP, and Lisa Nandy, MP for Wigan. Chaired by Jack Airey Head of Housing, Policy Exchange.

Apply for a place here: https://policyexchange.org.uk/pxevents/beauty-and-socialism/

This exhibition responds to the 200th birthday of artist, art critic and social reformer John Ruskin with a joyful look at how to use art for social change.

http://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/upcomingexhibitions/joyforever/

1pm

http://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/whats-on/events/whitworthstudies/ 

6-9pm

Lecture: The Ruskin Art Club, Los Angeles

The Guild of St George’s “Ruskin Wyre” project concludes with a free interactive day facilitated by the Guild of St George exploring Ruskin’s historical influence and his relevance to today.

For places and information, contact communications@guildofstgeorge.org.uk

Evening: for places and information, contact communications@guildofstgeorge.org.uk

Bewdley.museum@ wyreforestdc.gov.uk

Speaker: Suzanne Fagence Cooper

6 pm

Speaker: André Hélard

https://amis-vieux-chamonix.org/index.php/activites/annee-courante

This display in the first floor galleries of the Fire Station focuses on some of the artists that helped found the South London Gallery, their belief in social reform through art, literature and learning, and the ongoing legacy of their work.

Featuring works from John Ruskin.

6.30 pm

Speaker: Prof Peter Burman

First in a series of four Ruskin lectures organised by the SPAB, with others on 14, 21 and 28 March

https://www.spab.org.uk/whats-on/lectures/ruskin-venice-enduring-influence-conservation

Drinks 5.15pm Lecture 5.45pm – 6.45pm

Speaker: Dr Cynthia Gamble

Non Members are welcome. £5.00 per person per lecture, at the door.

http://oxfordartsociety.co.uk/links/

1-1.45pm

Speaker: Suzanne Fagence Cooper

www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/calendar/lunchtime-talk-18-february-2019-1300 

This event has been postponed to a later date.

7-9pm

A student string quartet and noted tenor Drake Dantzler performing Mendelssohn and the Los Angeles premiere of The King of the Golden River, a work for string quartet and tenor by British composer Sarah Rodgers, based on Ruskin’s fairy tale

Lecture by Professor Dinah Birch CBE

11am

Dr Nicholas Shrimpton

Booking through the Ashmolean website

6.30pm

An evening of readings and music from Ruskin, featuring actors Michael Palin and Dan Draper, and songs realised by Sarah Rodgers, including a performance of her setting of “The King of the Golden River” by Richard Edgar-Wilson and the Coull Quartet.

Tickets go on sale from the Royal Academy on 27th November 2018

More information and tickets here

Call for entries opens for The John Ruskin Prize 2019 for artists, makers and designers resident in the UK. Visit www.ruskinprize.co.uk for more on the prize and sign up for the newsletter here to receive the 2019 call for artists.

February 2019 will mark the bicentenary of John Ruskin’s birth and the eminent Victorian’s name and ideas still regularly crop up in a variety of contexts and media on both sides of the Channel and the Atlantic. For the members of the French Victorian and Edwardian Society (SFEVE), the anniversary is a timely opportunity to reappraise the ways in which Ruskin’s ideas have been interpreted, translated, transplanted on foreign soil – France but also Italy – and accommodated in the numerous fields that were impacted by his writings.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
– Pr Emily Eells, Université Paris Nanterre
– Mr Jérôme Bastianelli, Directeur Général Délégué, Musée du Quai Branly
– Pr George P. Landow, Brown University, USA

Conference Website: https://ruskinsfeve2019.sciencesconf.org/

6pm – 8pm

RSVP Ruth Nutter ruskininsheffield@gmail

9.30am – 6pm.

Speakers will include Kate Flint (Southern California), Mark Frost (Portsmouth), Peter Garratt (Durham), Sandra Kemp (Director of the Ruskin Research Centre, Lancaster), Francis O’Gorman (Edinburgh), John Parham (Worcester) and Marcus Waithe (Cambridge). There will also be a brief introduction to Ruskin Land from John Iles and a tour of the museum by John Holmes (Birmingham). At 6 in the evening, the conference will be followed by a public lecture by Fiona Stafford (Oxford) on ‘Ruskin’s Trees’.

Conference delegates will have the opportunity to see a rare exhibition of Ruskin’s designs for the museum from the Ashmolean collection, with further designs by Benjamin Woodward, Thomas Woolner and John Hungerford Pollen, painting by Richard St John Tyrwhitt, and sculpture by Alexander Munro. Although numbers will be limited, visitors to the lecture will also have the chance to sign up in advance to see the exhibition.

Registration for the symposium costs £20 (full-price) or £10 for students and other unwaged delegates. To register, please visit www.bit.ly/mnhtickets.

The public lecture is free of charge. To register, please visit www.bit.ly/mnhevents.

6-7pm

Professor Fiona Stafford explores Ruskin’s life-long love of trees. To celebrate John Ruskin’s 200th birthday, hear about his lifelong love of trees, from the idyllic garden at his family home in Herne Hill to his Lake District estate at Brantwood. Ruskin looked at trees with an eye trained by painting, a mind coloured by literature, a heart lifted by a sense of the divine manifest in the natural world. Above all, he looked at trees as trees and urged his audiences to see the world afresh.

The public lecture is free of charge. To register, please visit www.bit.ly/mnhevents.

‘Ruskin’s Trees’ is co-organised by the Diseases of Modern Life project, the European Research Council, the Constructing Scientific Communities project, the AHRC, the Nineteenth-Century Centre at the University of Birmingham, and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

For further information, please contact Dr Catherine Charlwood: catherine.charlwood@ell.ox.ac.uk

1.15pm

Speaker: Prof. Robert Hewison

Tickets will go on sale on Monday 29 October 2018 for NPG members, and then on Monday 5 November for the general public.

2.30-4.00pm

Professor Benoît Peeters on ‘Dreaming Paris, from Jules Verne to Le Corbusier’ and  Dr Carlos López-Galviz on ‘Alice and the Boulevard’

1pm

Professor Malcolm Andrews

10.30 St George’s Anglican Church, Campo San Vio

12.45 Pensione Calcina, Fondamenta ai Gesuati

Clive Wilmer, Master of the Guild of St George, will speak, together with Franco Posocco, Grand Guardian of the Scuola di San Rocco, and representatives of the City of Venice

6-8pm

Learners from all over the college have been invited to submit A4 size works inspired by the life and work of John Ruskin.

John Ruskin was one of the original drawing tutors at the Working Men’s College over 160 years ago.

To celebrate the bicentenary of his birth we will be holding an exhibition of work inspired by his legacy.

www.wmcollege.ac.uk

4.15pm

Speaker: Dr Thomas Hughes from the Courtauld institute

Part of the Lent Seminar Series

The exhibition marks the bicentenary of John Ruskin’s birth (8th February 1819), exploring how his influence is still felt today in current debates on arts, education, the economy and the environment. John Ruskin: The Power of Seeing will be accompanied by a varied programme of cultural events for children and adults including talks, lectures, workshops and Wednesday Late openings until 9pm. For more information, please visit: https://twotempleplace.org/exhibitions/john-ruskin/

For details see www.inscapetours.co.uk

10pm

The social campaigning, engineering and writing of three Victorians – art critic and philanthropist John Ruskin, poet and assistant to Florence Nightingale Arthur Hugh Clough and the builder of London’s sewer system Joseph Bazalgette. Greg Tate, Suzanne Fagence Cooper, Stephen Halliday and Kevin Jackson join Laurence Scott to debate the way these 3 Victorians changed the way we look at the world and shaped our understanding of the Victorians.

6pm

15 newly commissioned songs to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of Anglia Ruskin University attaining university status

4.15pm

Jo Taylor, Manchester University, Jen Southern and Linda O’Keefe, Lancaster Institute for the
Contemporary Arts (LICA)

For more information, please contact via 01524 593587 or ruskin.library@lancaster.ac.uk

4.15pm

Timothy Chandler, University of Pennsylvania and Humboldt University Berlin and
Andy Tate, Reader, Department of English & Creative Writing, Lancaster University

For more information, please contact via 01524 593587 or ruskin.library@lancaster.ac.uk

A starlike object moves in the dark space of the Blue Gallery whilst, in the Annexe, the sky has shattered into a cairn of shards.

The Transience of Wonder: sculptural installation  and Black Sun: video installation

Video artist and sculptor Patricia Townsend returns to the Blue Gallery five years after her video installation Morecambe Bay. In Black Sun she presents a hypnotic vision which is powerfully moving together with a sculptural installation in the Annexe reflecting Ruskin’s love of the sky; polarities which usher-in 2019, the bicentenary of Ruskin’s birth.

The Day School will begin at 9.30am with coffee and a Danish before two morning lectures. We will have a break at approximately 11.30am followed by a lecture before lunch. Lunch will be served at approximately 12.30pm. In the afternoon we shall enjoy two further lectures before finishing with tea and biscuits at 3.30pm.

Chair:

Rita McClean

Speakers:

Dr Cynthia Gamble (Former Chair of the Ruskin Society and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter) – ‘How Ruskin Changed Proust’s Life: From Dilettante to Writer’

Joe Holyoak (Architect and urban designer, architectural columnist for the Birmingham Post) – ‘Ruskin and J. H. Chamberlain’

Dr Tom Jones (Lecturer and art teacher) – ‘Drawing as Seeing: Ruskin Today’

Ellen McAdam (Director of Birmingham Museums Trust) – ‘Ruskin and Burne-Jones’

Professor Stephen Wildman (Lancaster University) – ‘Untold Pleasures: The Ruskins’ Turner Collection’

More information and tickets can be found here

9.30am until 3.30pm

For further details see https://bmi.org.uk/product/saturday-17-november-ruskin-great-victorian-day-school/

4.15pm

Alan Davis, Editor Ruskin Review, and Robert Hewison, Cultural Historian

For more information, please contact via 01524 593587 or ruskin.library@lancaster.ac.uk

Lecture Given by John Holmes, Professor of English, Birmingham University

Join us at the Ruskin Library to find out more about the plants and animals that we can find in and around Lancaster. Come along to our free family-friendly nature walk led by Dr Jo Taylor.

We’ll spend 45 minutes walking around Lancaster University’s woodland trails spotting plants and listening to birdsong, and thinking about why these things matter to us. We’ll learn how to identify key plants and birds, and play games along the way. Then, we’ll spend 45 minutes making artworks inspired by our walk, just as John Ruskin used to do.

Suitable for children age 4–11, who must be accompanied by an adult.

Registration and further details at https://lancaster-uk.libcal.com/event/3339626

4.15pm-6pm

Dr Sarah Casey, Senior Lecturer in Drawing and Installation, Lancaster University, Institute for the Contemporary Arts, and Dr Rachel Dickinson, Principal Lecturer, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University.

All welcome – if possible, please register at https://lancaster-uk.libcal.com/event/3350212.

Speakers: Professor David St. John (Department of English, University of Southern California); Dr. Sara Atwood (The Guild of St. George and Portland Community College).

Film: “Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry”

5:30pm

V and A Director Tristram Hunt speaks on John Ruskin, offering a unique perspective on Ruskin’s writings about art and museums in Ruskin’s time as well as our own.

2-4pm

Speakers include Kateri Ewing (Artist-in-Residence, Roycroft Campus); Jim Spates (Professor of Sociology Emeritus, Hobart and William Smith Colleges); Joe Weber (Printer, Roycroft Campus)

6.30pm

The former Secretary of State of Culture, Media and Sport, Chris Smith, takes up Ruskin’s idea of “a political economy of art” in his 1857 lectures, “A Joy For Ever”, and explores contemporary issues concerning the public impact of the arts.

Book Tickets: http://ruskinfoundation2018.eventbrite.com

5-8pm

Speakers:  John and Jim Ipekjian

Activists, Artisans & Apprentices, and due to feature a talk from Guild Companion, Frank Field MP

www.holytrinityartsandcrafts.org

2.30pm to 5.00pm

The Ruskin Society will be celebrating the publication of John Ruskin and Nineteenth-Century Education. Professor Dinah Birch will address the event and will be formally presented with a copy of the volume by Professor Francis O’Gorman, Chair of the Ruskin Society. Professor Valerie Purton, who edited the volume, will speak about the book.

Speaker: Professor William Deverell (Department of History, University of Southern California).

The Annual Ruskin Lecture, sponsored by The Ruskin Art Club, Los Angeles, an event celebrating the 130^th Anniversary of the Ruskin Art Club.

www.ruskinartclub.com/calendar/2018/9/5/brash-los-angeles-in-1888-with-willian-deverell 

12.30 – 2pm

Details www.ruskininsheffield.com

Organised by the Association of British Botanical Artists, as part of the Botanical Art Worldwide Exhibition 2018

6 for 6:30pm

The 2018 Whitelands Ruskin Lecture

Speaker: Beate Howitt, Guild Companion and 1957 Whitelands May Queen

In 2017, Guild Companion Beate Howitt celebrated the 60th anniversary of her election and crowning as the Whitelands May Queen, in a tradition instigated at John Ruskin’s suggestion in 1881. In this year’s Ruskin lecture, Beate will share her story of that time and her lifetime of interest in Ruskin since.

This is a free event, but please email communications@guildofstgeorge.org.uk to reserve your place.

Whiteland College’s annual May Day Ceremony with follow on Saturday, 12th May. Guild Director Dr. Rachel Dickinson will present the May Monarch and his or her attendants with a selection of Ruskin’s books. 

2-4.30pm

An English Heritage Event

Cynthia Gamble will be leading a literary and artistic walk among the picturesque ruins of Wenlock Priory, pausing at appropriate spots, such as the chapter house with its blind arcading, to evoke the presence of John and Effie Ruskin (who visited Wenlock Priory in 1850) through the reading of passages from The Stones of Venice and Effie’s letters. There will also be readings from works by Henry James and Henry Adams who were greatly influenced by their visits to the medieval ruins and their stays in the prior’s lodgings.

Cynthia will be accompanied by William Motley who lived in the prior’s lodging and who was baptised in the ancient oratory for which the magnificent curtains embroidered with Pre-Raphaelite motifs were made.

The walk will be preceded by a talk by Cynthia and William about Wenlock Priory and Abbey, with a special focus on Cynthia’s book Wenlock Abbey 1857-1919: A Shropshire Country House and the Milnes Gaskell Family. 

Cardiff University Special Collections and Archives is hosting a two-day conference to celebrate the Collingwood Archive and the year-long project to catalogue it. The conference will promote scholarship in the field of Collingwood studies and raise the profile of the Collingwood Archive to potential researchers.

The Collingwood family’s diverse interests and experiences span art and art history, archaeology, architecture, aviation, Icelandic studies, philosophy, Ransome studies, Ruskin studies, and many more subjects beside.

The conference will coincide with the launch of an exhibition of treasures from the Collingwood Archive. This exhibition will be the first time many of the magnificent items from the Collingwood Archive will be available for public viewing.

Cardiff contact: David Boucher BoucherDE@cardiff.ac.uk

Please ring for Information: 212/998-6780

Launch of the completed Ruskin comic trilogy, incorporating How to be Rich, How to See and How to Work’

part of A Guild in Venice week. Speakers include Robert Hewison, Clive Wilmer, Emma Sdengo and Rachel Dickinson.

More information

Sarah Casey (Lancaster University, LICA) and Dr Rachel Dickinson (Manchester Metropolitan University)

Part of: ‘Thinking Fast and Slow: Ruskin Seminar Series 2018’

Working at the time of fracture of the sciences from classical studies, poetry and religion, Ruskin was one of the last great truly interdisciplinary thinkers. This new seminar series will pair speakers from across the arts, humanities and sciences to debate how Ruskin’s works challenged perception, language and perspective, and anticipated modes of thinking today.

Robert Hewison (Cultural Historian), and Professor Rob Short, (Lancaster University, Director of the Material Science Institute)

Part of: ‘Thinking Fast and Slow: Ruskin Seminar Series 2018’
Working at the time of fracture of the sciences from classical studies, poetry and religion, Ruskin was one of the last great truly interdisciplinary thinkers. This new seminar series will pair speakers from across the arts, humanities and sciences to debate how Ruskin’s works challenged perception, language and perspective, and anticipated modes of thinking today.

From 2.30pm

Members of the Ruskin Society are invited to the 2018 Birthday Celebration, featuring a talk by Clive Wilmer (Master of the Guild of St George) and the presentation of the 2017 Ruskin Society Book Prize.

More information

Dr Chris Donaldson and Professor Mike Hughes (Lancaster University, Department of History)

This seminar will feature a paper, a response, and a group discussion of a passage from Modern Painters. Chris Donaldson will explore the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of Ruskin’s writings about travel. In response, Mike Hughes will consider the issues arising from interpreting how people experienced and perceived time in the past, and how modernity affects cognition. A key focus here will be Ruskin’s reflections on time and travelling in Modern Painters III §24 (Library Edition, Vol. 5, pp. 370–71) and the introductory passage to Chapter 4 of The Cestus of Aglaia (§43-§44) , which will focus discussion of Ruskin’s thinking and about issues of mobility, motion, and temporal perception.

More information