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If you would like to contribute other Ruskin locations not featured on this map, please fill out the form below. The first round of contributions will close on November 15, 2019.
Ruskin’s Life and Afterlives:
A Digital Map
As an art critic, social theorist, and educator, John Ruskin visited, wrote about, and was read in a wide range of places. In several of these locations he left a trace that is still evident today. “Ruskin’s Life and Afterlives” is an interactive digital map that visualizes his travels and the reach of his works in his lifetime and after. The project is ongoing, more locations will be added, and we invite your suggestions.
Select a pin on the map, or a location from the list on the left, to learn more.
This map is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Unto This Last: Two Hundred Years of John Ruskin shown at the Yale Center for British Art from September 5 to December 8, 2019, and at the Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village from March 10 to May 31, 2020.
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Unto This Last:
Two Hundred Years of John Ruskin
A complex and often contradictory figure, John Ruskin stands as one of the most influential thinkers of the nineteenth century. A pioneering art critic and an accomplished draftsman, he believed that art had the power to transform society.Two centuries after his birth, this exhibition examines Ruskin’s legacy as a social reformer, ecological thinker and educator.
Ruskin championed the landscape painter J. M. W. Turner and avant-garde artists such as the Pre-Raphaelites. He argued that close attention to nature produced the most meaningful art and architecture. Ruskin recognized the damaging environmental and social effects of industrialization and railed against the brutal conditions of factory labor. He found a contrasting model of creative labor and freedom in the expressive sculptural decorations of Gothic buildings. His text Unto this Last, challenged capitalism itself, demanding fair treatment for everyone, including the poorest. He concluded: “THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE.”
Progressive thinkers worldwide from the founders of Britain’s Labour Party to Mahatma Gandhi have acknowledged Ruskin’s influence. Yet his solutions to society’s problems were often rooted in hierarchical ideas about race, gender and class. The questions Ruskin raised, nonetheless, are urgent for us today: How should historical buildings and monuments be understood and preserved? What can we learn from the natural world and how should we care for it? What is the ethical value of beauty? How do we make a more just society?
Unto This Last: Two Hundred Years of John Ruskin has been curated by three PhD Candidates in Yale University’s Department of the History of Art: Tara Contractor, Victoria Hepburn, and Judith Stapleton, with Tim Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art at Yale and Courtney Skipton Long, Acting Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Yale Center for British Art.
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