The Ruskin – Library, Museum and Research Centre is home to the world-leading collection of works by the artist, critic, environmentalist and social thinker John Ruskin (1819-1900) and his circle. It houses thousands of paintings and drawings, books and manuscripts, prints, photographs and 125 daguerreotypes, including amongst the earliest known images of Venice and of the Alps. Ruskin’s oeuvre is rooted in humanity’s relationship with the natural world and what it means to inhabit this world, as is evident in in his finely observed diagrams of plants and peacock feathers, his geological collections, and his photography of glacial landscapes.
Ruskin was the foremost interdisciplinary thinker of the 19th century, with a remarkable ability to combine different forms of cognition and communication. He criticised what he regarded as ‘the natural tendency of accurate science to make the possessor look for, and eminently see, the things connected with his special bit of knowledge’. He argued for ‘polygonal’ thinking and claimed that his scientific drawings were at the forefront of the field with ‘all that is useful for geological science or landscape art’. His works probe the primacy of observation, experimental image-making and multiple languages of descriptive imaging across media and disciplinary domains.
Drawing on works from The Ruskin’s collection, this presentation will explore Ruskin’s legacy in the context of scientific innovation. It will examine how Ruskin’s ‘polygonal’ thinking and his practices for the study of the natural world as an artist and art critic counterpointed and contradicted the scientific methods and orthodoxies of the day. Ruskin’s emphasis on plural repertoires of knowledge and the interplay of scientific knowledge and social and cultural value are increasing relevant today.
Professor Sandra Kemp is Director of The Ruskin – Library, Museum and Research Centre and Professor of History at Lancaster University. She is Visiting Professor in the Department of Materials at Imperial College. As an academic and curator, she has previously worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), the Royal College of Art, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, and the Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Her work is centred in visual and material culture: on the role of museums in critical enquiry through the history of collections, display and engagement with diverse audiences, and in building knowledge across disciplines. Her most recent publication, Futures (co-edited with Professor Jenny Andersson, Oxford University Press, 2021), reassesses and problematizes the constitution of futurity in a broad spectrum of disciplines, ranging from literature and the arts, to emerging design and technologies in fields from energy and nanotechnology, to austerity politics and financial markets. Previous projects include: Future Face: Image, Innovation, Identity at the London Science Museum (2006); The Future is our Business: The Visual History of Future Expertise at the V&A (2013); John Lockwood Kipling: Art, Design and the Punjab at the V&A (2017) and the exhibition Ruskin: Museum of the Near Future at The Ruskin (2019).