Ruskin Art Club Inc

RUSKIN ART CLUB EVENTS: FISCAL 2023-2024Through mounting virtual in addition to live, in-person events, we have been able to expand and diversify audiences served by our events. Attendees come from Southern California and the West, but also from the East Coast and abroad. Membership in the organization has also expanded to include members across the United States and the UK.In addition, we launched our Ruskin Art Club YouTube channel in 2021, which archives all our current programs and many from the recent past as a service both to members and friends and as an ongoing resource for the public. It is available on our website: www.ruskinartclub.org. The channel expands the outreach of our activities to online subscribers and YouTube audiences. We currently post more than 100 events, lectures, and presentations on our channel. To indicate the extent of our outreach to the public, I have added the current number of YouTube views to Zoom and in-person attendance figures.JULY-AUGUSTField trips: [in person]Saturday, August 24, 2-5pm: Judson Studios TourWork in Progress: Pagoda by James JeanFee: $20Attendance: 60Expenses: $0Income: $1,200 (memberships): (2) $150SEPTEMBERFriday, Sept. 6: Apricot Lane Farms private tour [in person]9-11am, fee: $35Expenses: $1,200Attendance: 15Income: $310 + 2 memberships: $225 = $535Saturdays, September 7&14, 10-11:30am [Zoom]Study sessions: (thematic) America in Ruskins writingsAttendance: 12Expenses: $0Saturday, Sept. 21, 9-10:30am [PDT] Annual Ruskin Lifetime Achievement Award (with Ruskin Society of North America): Robert Hewison Tribute [Zoom]Attendance: 30Expenses: $0Income: $0YouTube: 928 viewsOCTOBERFriday, October 4 (evening) Saturday, Oct. 5 (morning/afternoon)RUSKIN IN AMERICA ConferenceFriday, Oct. 4: Keynote address at Telescope Studio with receptionSaturday, Oct. 5: Doheny Library all day (with lunch), 10am-4:30pm. Six presentations and a panel discussion.For a man who never set foot in America, John Ruskin, at the turn of the twentieth century, wielded an outsized influence on art, environmental, and social movements in this country. This is a fact often underappreciated in assessments of Ruskin's global impact. From the American Pre-Raphaelites to utopian social experiments in Florida, Georgia, and California, Ruskin's vision inspired many facets of American idealism and social reform. This conference, the first of its kind, will explore Ruskin's contributions to American movements, thinkers, and culture in the 19th and 20th centuries and suggest ways in which he speaks to the issues of American life today.List of speakers:Gabriel Meyer keynote, Ruskin and the California DreamSara Atwood, Over-hopefulness and getting on-ness: Ruskin, Nature, and America Virginia Anderson: The Artist Is a Telescope: John Ruskin, Charles Herbert Moore, and the American Pre-Raphaelite MovementGray Brechin, Ruskins Influence on Franklin Roosevelts New DealSharon Weltman, Thinking Ecologically with Ruskin, or How Women Will Save the WorldAttendance: 50Expenses: $1,892.15Income: (2 memberships): $300YouTube: 432 views (total)Saturday, October 19: LA Archives Bazaar (USC), all dayExpenses: $1,000Income: $0NOVEMBERNovember 9 & 16, 9-10:30am [PST]: Study sessions: The Mystery of Life and Its Arts with Rachel DickinsonAttendance: 27Expenses: $0Income: (3 memberships, $300)YouTube: 129/639 viewsWednesday, Nov. 20 (Fogg Fellows), 12:30-1:30pm [EST]: Marjorie Cohn: Ruskin and the Origins of Art History at Harvard [Zoom]The Ruskin Art Club has received a very special invitation to join the Fellows of the Fogg Museum at Harvard University on a ZOOM event, a lecture by Dr. Marjorie Cohn about Ruskin and the beginnings of the museum and the teaching of art history as a result of the friendship of John Ruskin and Harvard President Charles Eliot Norton.2025JANUARYSaturday, January 18, 10-11:30am [PST]: Marjorie Cohn: John Ruskin, James Whistler, and the Ghost of Turner [Zoom]The artist James Whistler sued the critic John Ruskin for libel in 1878 after Ruskin disparaged his work in a July 1877 issue of his newsletter, Fors Clavigera. The resulting trial laid bare swiftly changing aesthetic perceptions at the end of the 19th century. While Whistler won the legal case, he was bankrupted by court costs. Heading to Venice to nurse his wounds, he found, paradoxically, in the city Ruskin worshiped, the materials for an extraordinarily original series of Venetian drawings and etchings.Attendance: 35Expenses: $0Income: $0YouTube: 258 viewsFEBRUARYSaturday, February 8, 7-8:30pm, ANNUAL RUSKIN BIRTHDAY BASH at Telescope Studio in downtown LA [in person]Poets David St. John and Lynne Thompson read from recent work and Tiffany Chang, violin, Allan Hon, cello, and Alex Zhu, piano perform the music of Mozart, Meyer, and Ruskin. Festive reception follows.Attendance: 50Expenses: $1,250Income: 5 memberships: $450 Saturdays, February 15 and 22, 9-10:30am [PST], Study Sessions: The Stones of Venice [Zoom]This year we will examine passages from all three volumes Ruskin's 1853 masterwork, The Stones of Venice. We will be joined and most ably assisted in these sessions by scholars from the FORS Center at Ca' Foscari University based in "La Serenissima" herself.Attendance: 20Expenses: $0Income: $0 MARCHSaturday, March 8, 1:30-3:30pm, in association with the California Art Club, Pasadena (in person): Mountain Gloom/Mountain Glory: John Ruskin and John Muir, lecture by Gabriel MeyerGabriel Meyer examines the ways Ruskins ideas influenced pioneering naturalist John Muir (1838-1914) and American environmentalism at the turn of the 20th century.Thursday, March 13, 7-8:30pm, Wende Museum (Culver City), in person and livestream. ANNUAL ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE LECTURE ON ARCHITECTURE: Work Done with Pleasure and Free Work: John Ruskin and Sergio Ferro, presentation by Claudio Silveira AlmaralAttendance: 60Expenses: $1,000Income: 2 memberships: $225YouTube: 207 viewsSaturdays, March 22 and 29, 10-11:30am [PST], Study Sessions on The Stones of Venice [Zoom]APRILSaturday, April 26, 10-11:30am [PST], Study Session on The Stones of Venice [Zoom]Attendance: 12Expenses: $0Income: $0MAYSaturday, May 3, 3-5pm, Judson Studios, The Illuminated Window: Stories Across Time by Virginia Raguin [in person]Raguin examines windows from iconic locations such as the cathedrals of Chartres, Canterbury, and Cologne; Paris Sainte Chapelle; Swiss guild halls; the Pink Mosque in Iran; Tiffanys chapel for the World Columbian Exposition; and Frank Lloyd Wrights homes in California.Thursday, May 15, 5-7pm [PDT], Mark D. Usher: Upcycling Antiquity in Ruskins Unto this Last [Zoom]This talk, drawn from Usher's new book Following Nature's Lead: Ancient Ways of Living in a Dying World (Princeton University Press, 2025), highlights how Ruskins upcycling of the classical past informs his views on political economy in Unto This Last.Attendance: 25Expenses: $0Income: 1 membership: $75YouTube: 26 views Saturdays May 17 and 31, 10-11:30am, Study Sessions on The Stones of Venice [Zoom]Attendance: 14Expenses: $0Income: 1 membership: $75JUNEThursday, June 19, 5-6:30pm, [PDT], Cupidity and Blindness Chasing Joy from the City: The Art of Evelyn de Morgan, with Stuart Denenberg [Zoom]Gallery owner and thorough Ruskinian Stuart Denenberg presents the art of Pre-Raphaelite Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919), a cache of rare Whistler documents, a Ruskin portrait and other treasures recently acquired by Denenberg Fine Arts.Attendance: 17Expenses: $0Income: $0YouTube: 69 viewsSaturday, June 28, 10-11:30am [PDT], Study Session on The Stones of Venice [Zoom]Attendance: 12Expenses: $0Income: $0