Event Details

In 2020-2021, we explore the global significance of Ruskin’s legacy in our seminar series ‘Ruskin Beyond Britain’.

For someone who never set foot on those shores, the formative influence Ruskin wielded on American artists and thinkers in the 19th century is both remarkable and remarkably under-reported.

Gabriel Meyer explores the attraction of Ruskin’s aesthetic perspectives, and his famous instruction to ‘Go to Nature’, for American society after the Civil War, and focuses on Ruskin’s impact on the creation of craft-based and utopian communities in mid-19th century California.

Our forebears turned to Ruskin in search of a radical thinker, one to tell us that our choices matter. The systemic and ecological failures of our own times appear far more threatening and urgent than the ones they knew, and may require more radical and wholehearted responses. Meyer asks, what can Ruskin teach us today?

Gabriel Meyer is an award-winning novelist, poet, and journalist. He is the recipient of an honorary doctorate in humane letters from the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology at the University of California (Berkeley) in recognition of his work. Meyer has lectured widely in the United States and Europe, including major addresses at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, Notre Dame University, the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Meyer has written extensively on the thought of John Ruskin and, since 1998, has been president, and now executive director of the Ruskin Art Club, Los Angeles’s oldest cultural and arts association. Meyer has steered the club back to its earliest roots in the ideals of John Ruskin and in association with other historic California arts and crafts-oriented institutions: the Judson Studios in Highland Park, the Gamble House in Pasadena, the California Art Club, the Huntington Library and the Southwest Museum. Under his leadership, the Ruskin Art Club continues to advance the cause of Ruskin’s thought in the 21st century and to develop ways to support writers, artists, musicians, architects, and thinkers who espouse Ruskin’s values in Southern California.

Respondent: Dr Christopher Donaldson is a researcher at Lancaster University principally concerned with 18th- and 19th-century cultural history. He is research centre coordinator for The Ruskin – Library, Museum and Research Centre, editor of The Ruskin Review and co-editor of the Digital Forum for the Journal of Victorian Culture.

This event is part of the 2020-2021 Ruskin Seminar Series, 'Ruskin Beyond Britain'. The series will place Ruskin’s legacy in a global context, featuring presentations from an international community of researchers who are exploring how Ruskin’s ideas have affected societies from Russia to Brazil, from America to Italy, and from France to China. Each seminar will include a presentation and response, followed by questions and discussion with participants. The Ruskin Seminar Series is free, online and open to all. If you would like to join the seminar reading group, email the-ruskin@lancaster.ac.uk.