2012 Fellowship in Pre-Raphaelite Studies

A reminder about the 2012 Fellowship in Pre-Raphaleite Studies offered by the University of Delaware Library and the Delaware Art Museum:

The University of Delaware Library in Newark, Delaware and the Delaware Art Museum invite applications for the 2012 joint Fellowship in Pre-Raphaelite Studies. This one-month Fellowship is intended for scholars working on the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates. Up to $3,000 is available.

The Delaware Art Museum is home to the most important collection of Pre-Raphaelite art in the US. Assembled largely by Samuel Bancroft, Jr., the collection includes paintings, works on paper, decorative arts, manuscripts, and letters, and is augmented by the museum’s Helen Farr Sloan art library. With comprehensive holdings in books, periodicals, electronic resources, and microforms, the University of Delaware Library is a major resource for the study of literature and art. The Special Collections Department contains material related to the Pre-Raphaelites who are also well-represented in the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection of Victorian books, manuscripts, and artworks.

Application deadline: October 15, 2011

More information: www.delart.org/education/fellowships.html or write to:

Pre-Raphaelite Studies Fellowship Committee
Delaware Art Museum
2301 Kentmere Parkway
Wilmington, DE 19806 USA

New William Morris Society Website

We are happy to announce that the William Morris Society in the United States has a brand-new website. Everything from the "old" site—information about Morris's life and work, images of his s design work, events listings, texts, translations, details about Morris Society membership and publications, and the online Journal of William Morris Studies—is there, along with new features:

• streamlined payment system for new and renewing members
• full site search, available from every page
• higher-resolution images of Morris's designs
• improved navigation

The web address remains the same: www.morrissociety.org.

...and it's International Hug a Medievalist Day!

http://fmrsi.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/news-international-hug-a-medievalist-day-31st-march-2011/

The Skeleton in Armor; or, Morris & Co and Walter Crane Crossing the Pond

Posted today on the Beinecke Library blog, "Room 26, Cabinet of Curiosities":
http://brblroom26.wordpress.com/

Upcoming Event, The Cult of Beauty exhibition at the V&A, April 2-July 17, 2011

http://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/future_exhibs/aestheticism/index.html

and, for more detailed information:

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/periods_styles/cult-of-beauty/exhibition/index.html

Death of Joan South, Long-time Morris Society Member

Marilyn Ibach, a member of the William Morris Society in the United States, writes—

Joan South, who was active for so many years as Trustee of the William Morris Society in the UK, and who remained a great mentor to me long after I left my job at the William Morris Centre in 1978, passed away peacefully at home with her three children Imogen, William, and Julia at her side, on February 6, 2011, aged 86, after some months in a nursing home in Kent.

Joan became a member of the William Morris Society in 1970, and by the time I was living at Kelmscott House in 1977, she was a Committee member.  She regularly dropped by Tuesdays on her way to market in Hammersmith to see how I was going on. Having moved to London from Australia in 1959, Joan was sympathetic to a new arrival, and  regularly invited me to her home, including for a wonderful Christmas dinner.

Her interest in William Morris was the main reason that we met, and of course we could talk about that for hours.  But it was her nurturing, bright nature that drew me, and I am sure, many others.  Florence Boos, when learning of her death, called Joan South a woman of great intelligence and broad culture.
In the late 1990s, Joan became the Honorary Secretary of the William Morris Society. She also was active in another cause, the Leasehold Enfranchisement Association, when her lease at Upper Phillimore Gardens was threatened with closure. She wrote the book Leasehold: the Case for Reform, in 1994.

I last saw Joan in September 2009, and she was as interested and involved in family, friends, and life as always.   I will miss her.

Caroline Arscott Lecture at UPenn on 14 February

From the UPenn / Penn Visual Studies School of Arts and Sciences webpage:

Caroline Arscott, Head of Research, Courtauld Institute of Art
With a brief response by Jeremy Melius, Dept. of Art and Archaeology,
Princeton University

"William Morris's Woodpecker Tapestry: Evolution and Utopia"

"This lecture draws on Herbert Spencer’s account of the emergence of psychological life (from physiological existence) in his account of evolution, and on Charles Darwin’s account of sexual selection in relation to evolution to investigate the temporality of the Woodpecker tapestry made by William Morris in 1885. The tapestry relates to the tale from Ovid in which Picus is transformed into a woodpecker. Arscott will focus on the theme of transformation and raise questions about the temporality implied by the motif and by the verses added to the tapestry by Morris. A particular relationship between the present and the future is posited. Arscott argues that this has a bearing on the way that Morris’s tapestry offers a meditation on its own making."

Caroline Arscott is the author of William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones: Interlacings (2008).

Monday, 14 February 2011
5 p.m.
Cohen Hall 402
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA

Free and open to the public. Reception to follow