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THE RUSKIN YEAR: 2019 BICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE BIRTH OF JOHN RUSKIN

  • Doheny Memorial Library, 240 University of Southern California (map)

The 20th Annual Ruskin Lecture • Co-sponsored by the Ruskin Art Club (founded 1888) and the Doheny Memorial Libraries, USC

5:30 Reception/Exhibition of Ruskin Art Club historical documents (Feuchtwanger Room, Doheny, 2nd floor)

6pm Lecture/followed by discussion

Robert Hewison: “John Ruskin: the Argument of the Eye”

“To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, – all in one.” Distinguished Ruskin scholar Robert Hewison discusses the importance of visual experiences in Ruskin’s life, and traces his career through his own drawings and his encounters with great paintings.

Robert Hewison is a recognised expert on the work of John Ruskin, publishing his first study, John Ruskin: The Argument of the Eye in 1976. He has published several books on Ruskin, and he co-curated the exhibition Ruskin, Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites at Tate Britain in 2000. He is a Visiting Professor at the Ruskin Library and Research Centre at Lancaster University, a Trustee of the Ruskin Foundation, and a former Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford. In 2017 he delivered a course on Ruskin as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, New York, and will repeat the course in 2019. In 2010 Yale University Press published his Ruskin on Venice: “The Paradise of Cities.” In 2018, his collection of studies Ruskin and his Contemporaries was published by Pallas Athene. He has also published widely on aspects of 20th century British cultural history.