2010 William Morris Events in the United States

20 March
Call for Papers Deadline—Morris and the Arts: Books, Painting, Crafts, Architecture
Deadline for proposls for papers for William Morris Society session at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention, 6–9 January 2011 in Los Angeles, CA. Proposals should be sent to Florence Boos, florence-boos@uiowa.edu.

20 March
Call for Papers Deadline—Pre-Raphaelite Uses of the Past
Deadline for proposals for fifteen-minute papers for a non-guaranteed session co-sponsored by the William Morris Society and the Society for Arthurian Literature at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention, 6–9 January 2011 in Los Angeles, CA. This proposed collaborative session will examine aspects of Victorian historicism, especially neo-medievalism in painting, book design, poetry, romance narrative, translation and other genres. Papers might consider ways in which the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates and successors reshaped the works of Dante, Chaucer, Boccaccio, Froissart, the Icelandic sagas, Malory and other Arthurian sources for a middle-class Victorian audience. Reflections on the different forms of Victorian medievalism, variant uses of the same legends (e. g., of Launcelot and Guenevere), and the social context and psychological motivations of Victorian medievalism are also welcome. 1-2 page proposals for papers should be be sent to Michelle R. Warren, michelle.r.warren@dartmouth.edu, and Florence Boos, florence-boos@uiowa.edu. Notice of the MLA Program Committee's decision regarding this proposed session will be posted on the William Morris Society website in late Spring 2010.

7–9 October
Useful & Beautiful: The Transatlantic Arts of William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites
Newark and Wilmington, DE
A conference and related exhibitions at the University of Delaware (Newark, DE) and at the Delaware Art Museum and the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate (Wilmington, DE). Organized with the assistance of the William Morris Society in the United States, “Useful & Beautiful” will highlight the strengths of the University of Delaware’s rare books, art, and manuscripts collections; Winterthur’s important holdings in American decorative arts; and the Delaware Art Museum’s superlative Pre-Raphaelite collection (the largest outside Britain). All events will focus on the multitude of transatlantic exchanges that involved Morris, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the Arts and Crafts and Aesthetic movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition to sessions featuring internationally-known scholars and experts, there will be a keynote lecture by noted biographer, Fred Kaplan; demonstrations by leading practitioners who make and design Arts and Crafts objects; special exhibitions; and a performance of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest by the University of Delaware’s critically acclaimed Resident Ensemble Players.
For more information, contact Mark Samuels Lasner, marksl@udel.edu, (302) 831-3250; www.udel.edu/conferences/uandb
Proposals were due 15 March 2010; click here for the call for papers.

6–9 January 2011
William Morris Society Activities at the 2011 Modern Language Association Annual Convention
Los Angeles, CA
After many years of holding its annual meetings in December, the Modern Language Association will meet next on 6–9 January 2011 in Los Angeles. According to new MLA guidelines, Allied Organizations such as the William Morris Society are granted one guaranteed session and may apply for a second collaborative one. Accordingly, in 2011 the Morris Society is sponsoring one session and co-sponsoring a second with the Arthurian Society of America. We have also arranged to apply for a second 2012 session in association with SHARP, the Society for the History of Authors, Reading and Publishing.

Thursday, 6 January
81. "William Morris and the Arts: Architecture, Crafts, Design"
1.45–3 p.m., Olympic 3, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the William Morris Society
Presiding: Kathleen O'Neil Sims, independent scholar
"Morris's Hands," Sue A. Zemka, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder
"William Morris and the SPAB (Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings): From the Nineteenth Century to the Present," Andrea Donovan, Minot State Univ.
" "The Art of the Kelmscott Chaucer," Stephanie Amsel, Univ. of Texas, San Antonio

Friday, 7 January
310. "The Pre-Raphaelites and the Medieval Past"
1.45–3 p.m., Diamond Salon 6, J. W. Marriott
Program arranged by the William Morris Society and the Discussion Group on Arthurian Literature
Presiding: Florence S. Boos, Univ. of Iowa
"Rossetti's Rose: Elizabeth Siddal and The Romance of the Rose," Kathleen R. Slaugh-Sanford, Univ. of Delaware
"'Among the Cursed Jues': Edward Burne-Jones and 'The Prioress's Tale,'" Rachael Zeleny, Univ. of Delaware
"Translating Medieval Images in Beardsley's Le Morte Darthur," William Nelles, Univ. of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

Until 31 January
Apostles of Beauty: Arts and Crafts from Britain to Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
The first Arts and Crafts exhibition mounted at the museum in more than 30 years, Apostles of Beauty presents designs by the movement's most notable practitioners, from William Morris and C. R. Ashbee to Gustav Stickley and Frank Lloyd Wright. Highlighting a wide range of objects, including ceramics, furniture, metalwork, paintings, photographs, and textiles, the exhibition offers the chance for a large audience to see some of Chicago's spectacular holdings with works from the Art Institute, the Smart Museum, the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, Crab Tree Farm, and other private and public collections. The exhibition traces the history of the Arts and Crafts movement through its complex stylistic and philosophical influences. Galleries explore the movement's early roots in Britain and the impact of William Morris and his group on the next generation of architect-designers; its intersection with the phenomenon of Japanism in both British and American design; the development of American Arts and Crafts style and its popularization through specialized periodicals; the connections between the movement’s philosophies and pictorialism in photography; and Chicago's early acceptance of the British model and its later role in uniting hand and machine in the service of beauty.
www.artic.edu

5 March–5 June
Facing the Late Victorians: Portraits of Writers and Artists form the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection Henry B. Plant Museum, Tampa, FL
More than sixty portraits of writers and artists—including William and May Morris, George Eliot, Algernon Swinburne, Oscar Wilde, Kate Greenaway, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Max Beerbohm, Thomas Hardy, Ellen Terry, and Alfred Tennyson—in drawings, prints, photographs, books, and periodicals. Everything is drawn from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library; the exhibition is occassioned by the Nineteenth Century Studies Associaiton annoual conference, "Theatricality and the Performative in the Long Nineteenth Century." For an illustrated review of the 2008 Grolier Club version of this exhibition, see Maureen E. Mulvihill's essay for the Victorian Society in America's March-April 2008 e-newsletter.
www.facingthelatevictorians.com
www.plantmuseum.com

13 August–5 December
David Mabb: The Morris Kitsch Archive
Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE
Installation of several hundred images by London artist David Mabb of commercial objects decorated with William Morris patterns.
www.dcca.org

24 August–15 December
London Bound: American Writers in Britain, 1870–1916
University of Delaware Library, Newark, DE
London Bound: American Writers in Britain, 1870–1916, an exhibition of books, periodicals, drawings, photographs, manuscripts, letters, and printed ephemera, will be on view in Special Collections on the second floor of Morris Library from 24 August to 17 December 2010. Curated by Margaret D. Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women Studies and Professor of Humanities at the University of Delaware, and by Mark Samuels Lasner, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Delaware Library, this exhibition is one of several upcoming events associated with an interdisciplinary conference, "Useful and Beautiful: The Transatlantic Arts of William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites." As the title "London Bound" suggests, this exhibition focuses on turn-of-the-century writers 1) who made the transatlantic crossing to Britain, either to settle there or to visit; 2) who were connected, whether artistically or politically, to English counterparts, especially those in the Aesthetic or Pre-Raphaelite movements; and 3) who chose to have books issued by publishers in London, or who wrote for British periodicals. It draws on materials from Special Collections and from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library.
www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec

28 August–2 January 2011
A Belief in the Power of Beauty: A Selection of Works by May Morris
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE
Drawings, watercolors, and other work by May Morris, William Morris's daughter.
www.delart.org

15 September–2 January 2011
Gustav Stickley and the American Arts and Crafts Movement Newark Museum, Newark, NJ
Gustav Stickley and the American Arts and Crafts Movement offers the first comprehensive examination of the life and work of the recognized patriarch of the American Arts and Crafts movement. The exhibition explores Stickley as a business leader and design proselytizer, whose body of work included furnishings, architectural and interior designs, and the Craftsman magazine, which became synonymous with the Arts and Crafts movement at the turn of the twentieth century. This exhibition includes more than 100 masterworks produced by Stickley's designers and workshops: furniture, textiles, metalwork and lamps, as well as drawings. From Stickley's earliest progressive furniture of 1900 to designs created around the time of his ill- fated expansion of 1913, the exhibition provides a perspective on the aesthetics, craftsmanship, and identity of the works of Stickley's Craftsman Workshops and their role in creating the ideal home of the era.
www.newarkmuseum.org.

1 October–1 November
The Multifaceted Mr. Morris
Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library, Newark, DE
Books, manuscripts, letters, and drawings by William Morris are featured in this small show drawn largely from a private collection on loan to, and housed within, the University of Delaware Library. On view during the "Useful & Beautiful" conference, 7‐9 October, and also by appointment only at other times.
Contact: Mark Samuels Lasner, (302) 831-3250, marksl@udel.edu

31 October–30 January 2011
The Pre-Raphaelite Lens: British Photography and Painting, 1848–1875br> National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
In the first survey of British art photography in the 1850s and 1860s, some 130 photographs, paintings, and watercolors chronicle photography's relationship with Pre-Raphaelite art and its consequent role in changing concepts of vision and truth in representation. Photography's ability to quickly translate the visual world into an image challenged painters to find alternate versions of realism. Photographers, in turn, looked to Pre-Raphaelite subject matter and visual strategies in order to legitimate photography's status as a fine art. As the exhibition will show, Lewis Carroll, Julia Margaret Cameron, Roger Fenton, H. P. Robinson, O. G. Rejlander, and many lesser known photographers had much in common with such painters as John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John William Inchbold, as all wrestled with the question of how to observe and represent the natural world and the human face and figure. This rich dialogue between photography and painting is examined in the exhibition's thematic sections on landscape, portraiture, literary and historical narratives, and modern life subjects. Curator: Diane Waggoner, assistant curator, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art.
www.nga.gov

Talks, Lectures, and Conferences

Monday, 23 January, 6 p. m.
J. W. Waterhouse: The "Modern" Pre-Raphaelite
Grolier Club, New York, NY
Lecture by Peter Trippi sponsored by the Royal Oak Foundation. Acclaimed in his lifetime for such iconic works as The Lady of Shalott (Tate Britain) and Hylas and the Nymphs (Manchester Art Gallery), the Royal Academician John William Waterhouse (1849–1917) painted quintessentially English themes—both Pre-Raphaelite and classical. Although his art was forgotten shortly after World War I, as modernists came to see his pictures as old-fashioned, in the last decade his commercial value has risen dramatically—especially since 2000 when Andrew Lloyd-Webber purchased St. Cecilia for £6.6 million, the highest price ever paid for a Victorian painting at auction. This lecture will celebrate Waterhouse's remarkable achievements and also discuss how the artist’s work and his experience of artistic London in the 1890s differed from those of his Pre-Raphaelite forerunners in the 1850s, such as Rossetti, Millais, and Burne-Jones. Tickets $30 (members) and $40 (non-members).
www.royal-oak.org

Tuesday, 20 April, 4 p. m.
Rossetti and Music
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE
Lecutre by Karen Yuen, recipient of the 2010 University of Delaware Library/Delaware Art Museum Fellowship in Pre-Raphaelite Studies. Free and open to the public.
www.delart.org

16 October, 10 a.m.–2.30 p.m.
Honest and Beautiful: Gustav Stickley and The Arts & Crafts Home in America
Newark Museum, Newark, NJ
Join three leading experts as they explore the impact of the Arts and Crafts movement and Stickley’s work on the idea of home in America. Speakers: Joseph Cunningham, Curator, American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation; Ulysses Grant Dietz, Senior Curator at the Newark Museum; Kevin W. Tucker, the Margot B. Perot Curator of Decorative Art and Design, Dallas Museum of Art.
Members $15, Non-members $25. Pre-registration required, call (97) 596.6613.