ADMISSION: Free and open to the Public.  For reservations and information, please call (310) 640-0710 or email: grmncr@aol.com.

Reception: 5:30 p.m. 

Lecture: 6:00 p.m.

Join us for a lecture exploring Los Angeles in 1888, the year of the Ruskin Art Club’s founding. It is an especially apt time for examining a city that was poised on all manner of adolescent cusps: growth, identity, ambition, as well as self-doubt, anxiety, and boundless energy, for both good and ill. Hindsight and history help us see where the city would go, but specific focus on this brash year offers perspective on roads not taken, plans unrealized, visions quirky, odd, or just plain malevolent. The lecture will be preceded by a reception where materials related to the history of the club will be on display. 

William Deverell is Professor of History at USC and Director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. His publications explore the environmental, political, social, and cultural history of California and the American West. At USC, he also directs the USC Libraries Collections Convergence Initiative. He received his undergraduate degree in American Studies from Stanford and his graduate degrees in history from Princeton.