Political Theory — John Ruskin

Youtube series creators The School of Life describe how John Ruskin's main focus on beauty impacts political theory. 

Robert Hewison on John Ruskin

Cultural historian Robert Hewison on: John Ruskin's continuing relevance; the different roles he played during his life; the influences on his thinking; and his championing as an art critic of Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites.

John Ruskin: Artist and Observer -- a virtual tour

NGC Director Marc Mayer and Christopher Newall, a leading Ruskin scholar and the co-curator of John Ruskin: Artist and Observer take a walking tour of the exhibition and discuss the art and the man.

WRITTEN IN STONE: Ruskin and Venice

In collaboration with Save Venice — A lecture by Octavia Randolph. February 24, 2015

In December 2014 Octavia Randolph published her long-awaited novel, Light, Descending, about the English Victorian art critic John Ruskin. She writes of Venice and of Ruskin: “The city was so central to his world view and development of aesthetic theory that it must by nature occupy a signal place in his creative universe. It served as touchstone in his personal life as well; when he and Effie finally made their long-delayed wedding trip abroad Venice was the goal. Almost thirty years later, overwintering in the city, Ruskin descended into a grave psychological state marked by the hallucinations which would haunt him the remainder of his life. Yet as we know from his writings Venice symbolized the entirely of civilization to him, and wandering its calles he read not only the story of La Serenissima but the past and future of his own maritime empire, Britain.”

Ruskin on Craftsmanship by Marcus Waithe

“Ruskin on Craftsmanship” by Marcus Waithe (2015) This was the annual Guild of St. George lecture delivered on Nov. 7, 2015 at the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield (UK). Marcus Waithe is a University Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of English and a Fellow and College Librarian at Magdalen College (Cambridge), specializing in 19th-century literature. He speaks frequently on the topic of craft in the work of John Ruskin and William Morris.

Ruskinland by Andrew Hill

“‘Ruskinland’: How John Ruskin shapes our world” by Andrew Hill (delivered at the National Gallery conference “John Ruskin, Art Education, and Social Change” Sept. 21, 2019)

Andrew Hill, an award-winning columnist for the Financial Times, is the author of Ruskinland: How John Ruskin Shapes Our World (Pallas Athene). In Ruskinland, Hill 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.

"Living with Ruskin": Edmund de Waal & Professor Tim Barringer

Chaired by Nerissa Taysom, Oct. 20, 2020

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.

Scraping Ruskin by Jorger Otero-Pailos

Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, CT (Sept. 25, 2019)

Jorge Otero-Pailos, artist, Director and Professor of Historic Preservation, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University delivered a lecture in the Ruskin bicentennial year that complemented the exhibition "Unto This Last: Two Hundred Years of John Ruskin."

John Ruskin: In Awe of Nature

Museums Sheffield, Aug. 1, 2019

The quotations used to narrate this film are taken from Ruskin's writings: Modern Painters, 1843–1860, The Two Paths, 1859 and The Crown of Wild Olive, 1866. The passages were specially selected by our Ruskin Curator, Louise Pullen, and read by Chris Ellis.

Exhibition Opening Conversation | Unto This Last: Two Hundred Years of John Ruskin

The Yale Center for British Art, Sept. 19, 2019

Following an introduction by Prof. Tim Barringer, this landmark exhibition’s curators, catalog contributors and Courtney Skipton Long (assistant curator of prints and drawings at the Yale Center) discuss John Ruskin and why he matters today two centuries after his birth.

Interview with Ruskin scholar James S. Dearden (conducted by Howard Hull, director of Brantwood) July 2021.

This remarkable interview with renowned Ruskin scholar James S. Dearden on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday provides a unique account of the personalities and accomplishments of the first generation of modern Ruskin scholars as well as background to the priceless collection of Ruskin drawings and correspondence assembled by J. H. Whitehouse (1873-1955), which Dearden curated, and which is housed today at The Ruskin Centre, Lancaster University (UK). Dearden also comments on his own now-classic contributions to Ruskin studies. Time: 2 hours. (An abbreviated version of this interview can be found on the YouTube posting of the Award Ceremony for Dearden, 8-14-21)