Ruskin Art Club

RUSKIN ART CLUB EVENTS: FISCAL 2022-2023Through 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,the West, 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 nearly 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. 1.Ruskin Study SessionsSat., June 10, 2023, 10:00 AM 11:30 AM Sat., June 24, 2023This summer, we continue our informal Zoom study sessions on key works of Ruskin on the Saturdays of June 10th, 17th and 24th. These sessions are open to all members. While they involve close study of Ruskins text, they do not assume any special expertise or familiarity with Ruskin. In these sessions, we will be studying The Nature of Gothic chapter from Ruskins Stones of Venice.Attendance: (zoom) 10/12/8Income: $0Expenses: $0*Each month, our Zoom subscription=$71.93 /per year=$862.662.MEMBERS-ONLY (in-person) Field Trip to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library (Clark Library)Thursday, June 8, 2023/ 11:00 AM-12:30 PMA historic house and library, built in 1926, in the West Adams district. One of LAs gems, it houses Clarks extensive collection of seventeenth and eighteenth-century English literature, one of the largest collections of Oscar Wilde manuscripts and memorabilia in the US, along with a specialty in fin-du-sicle literature, and fine press printing. Our field trip includes a tour of the house as well as a specially curated exhibition of Kelmscott press editions (William Morris), Wilde memorabilia, and fine press editions. 3.THE LAW OF HELP: RUSKIN'S MORAL VISION OF CONNECTION by Gabriel MeyerThursday, May 25, 2023/ 5:00 PM-6:30 PMIn art and social critic John Ruskin's fifth volume of his Modern Painters, published in 1860, Ruskin identified help as the highest and first law of the universe -- and the other name of life. In this wide-ranging lecture, writer Gabriel Meyer examines Ruskin's law of help and its moral vision of connection, whereby the intensity of life is also the intensity of helpfulness -- completeness of depending of each part upon all the rest; the laws of death, separation, anarchy, and competition. He reflects on the fascinating interface of Ruskin's ideas with contemporary scientific explorations of the evolution of cooperation, which critique aspects of Darwinian thought. And he will suggest ways in which Ruskin's law of help challenges contemporary mores, with its focus on radical individualism and its attendant ills -- social isolation and growing polarization.Attendance (zoom): 28 (YouTube: 30)Income: $75 (membership)Expenses: $04.80th Birthday Tribute for Jim Spates: Sunday, May 7/12:00PM-1:30 PMThe Ruskin Society of North America and the Ruskin Art Club is hosting on Sunday, May 7, 12 noon-1:30pm [PDT] / 3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. [EDT]/ 8:00 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. [BST] (UK) a VIRTUAL 80TH BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE TO PROF. JIM SPATES (Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Hobart/William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY). Jim Spates friends and colleagues around the world salute one of our generations great Ruskin scholars.Attendance: 36 (YouTube: 36)Income: $0Expenses: $05.Ruskinian resonances in Japanese art and culture and the Ruskin & Morris Center of Osaka by Prof. Ikuko KurasawaThursday, April 27, 2023 / 5:00PM-6:30 PMThe Ruskin & Morris Center of Osaka was founded in 2005 by Mr. Norio Tsuyuki. In the last five years, a group of volunteer members came together in the wake of the bicentennial of Ruskins birth, and we have been holding events related to Ruskin, mainly in Kyoto and Osaka, such as reading discussion sessions and a symposium to learn about Ruskins ideas.In this virtual presentation, we give an overview of Ruskins influence on Japanese art and culture. We also introduce the Osaka centers recent programs and activities. Finally, we lead attendees on a virtual tour of the Ruskin & Morris Center of Osaka, where you will view the valuable Ruskin materials in their collection.Attendance: 24 (YouTube: 153)Income: $150 (two memberships)Expenses: $0 6.John Walker & Dr. Kazuya Oyama on the Japanese poet-artist Otagaki Rengetsu (1791-1875)Thursday, April 13, 2023 / 5:00PM-6:30 PMTwo presentations this month highlight the traditional craft aesthetics of Japan and John Ruskin's enduring influence on Japanese thinkers and artists today.Attendance: 19 (You Tube: 68)Income: $0Expenses: $07.2023 Ada Louise Huxtable Lecture on Architecture: Dr. Emily Pugh: Architecture Critics Aline B. Saarinen and Ada Louise Huxtable in Dialogue with the Getty Research InstituteThursday, March 23, 2023 / 5:00PM-6:30PMSaarinens career unfolded at a key moment in the evolution of popular architectural criticism in the US, building on the work of Lewis Mumford in his New Yorker column The Sky Line and preceding that of Ada Louise Huxtable, who would take over from Saarinen at the New York Times in 1963. In this talk, Dr. Pugh explores Saarinens influence, considering how her criticism, in print and on TV, played a decisive role in shaping the publics perception of architecture in the United States in the postwar period.Attendance: 42 (You Tube: 37)Income: $635 (four memberships)Expenses: $08.The Annual Ruskin Birthday Bash with the Zelter Quartet hosted by Andrew and Chloe Sapienza at the Telescope Studio (In-person)Thursday, February 9, 2023 / 5:30PM-7:00 PMRuskins birthday (February 8) is always a big occasion for the Ruskin Art Club. This year we are celebrating it on Feb. 9. We will present a full evening of readings, toasts, and music to honor the great art and social critic on his 204th birthday.Attendance: In-person: 35/ Zoom: 34Income: $1,250 (8 memberships) + contributionsExpenses: Reception: $4009.Loosing The Eternal Horses from The Dens of Night with Philip HoareSaturday, January 14, 2023/ 9:00AM-10:30 AMLike all great artists and visionaries, John Ruskin was a time-traveler. His aesthetic reached far into our present, his future, and deep into the past we have yet to uncover, from the deep time of the minerals and rocks he collected, like talismans or instruments, to the urgency of his Fors Clavigera newsletters, which prefigure our own social media and podcasts.Attendance: (zoom) 35 (YouTube: 44)Income: $450 (regular memberships) + $2,000 (two Life memberships) = $2,450Expense: Honorarium: $1,00010. The other name of life : An introduction to Ruskins Modern Painters with Sara AtwoodThu, Nov 3, 2022, 5:00PM-7:00PM Thu, Nov 10, 2022Two sessions exploring Modern Painters by John Ruskin.Attendance: 11/03: (zoom)23 (YouTube: 60) 11/10: 10 (YouTube: 18)Income: $0Expenses: $011.A Tribute to Louise Coffey-Webb (1966-2022), Lecture: A Royal Treasure: The Re- discovered Late 19 th c. Javanese Batik Collection of King Rama V of Siam by Dale Carolyn GluckmanThursday, October 20, 2022 / 5:00PM-6:30 PMEarlier this year the Ruskin Art Club and the Los Angeles art and museum world suddenly lost an outstanding teacher, curator, arts coordinator, family member and dear friend and colleague with the sudden passing of Louise Coffey-Webb. This program begins with a tribute to Louise and the career she built in California after leaving England to make LA and then Culver City her home. This is followed by a presentation on the King of Siams travels in Singapore and Java in 1871, 1896, and 1901 and the batik collection he made. Attendance: (zoom) 36 (YouTube: 66)Income: $0Expenses: $012.Van Akin Burd Ruskin Lifetime Achievement Award: Ruskin Society of North AmericaSaturday, September 24, 2022 / 9:00AM-10:00 AMVan Akin Burd, who died aged 101, devoted most of his academic career to the study of John Ruskin. The author of around 50 scholarly articles on the Victorian thinker, artist and philanthropist, and the editor of four editions of his writings, Burd was by common consent the towering figure in modern Ruskin studies.Attendance: (zoom) 30 (YouTube: 30)Income: $0Expenses: $013.The 22nd Annual Ruskin Lecture: The Doheny Library USC THE ECONOMY OF HEAVEN: RUSKIN, CAPITALISM, AND THE POST-CAPITALIST FUTURE with Professor Eugene McCarraherThursday, September 8, 2022 / 5:00PM-7:00 PMWhile John Ruskin has been recognized as one of the 19th centurys most trenchant critics of capitalism, the religious character of his criticism is often ignored, and its contemporary significance is either dismissed or unappreciated. But Ruskins opposition