Advance News: Walter Crane in Manchester

The Whitworth Art Gallery at the University of Manchester will open a new display on 16 August 2008 entitled "Art and Labour’s Cause is One": Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915. A close associate of William Morris, Crane was one of the most important, versatile, and radical artists of the nineteenth century—illustrator, painter, designer of decorative objects, wrier, and socialist. This exhibition explores the central role played by Manchester in Crane’s fusion of art, labor, and politics.
On 5 and 6 December the Whitworth Art Gallery hosts a conference, “Envisioning Utopia: British Art and Socialist Politics, 1870-1900,” to examine the dynamic between the urban and the pastoral in utopian visions of a socialist future and explore the role of visual art in formulating and articulating these political ideals. Keynote address Friday at 5.30 p. m. by Tim Barringer (Yale University). Speakers include Matthew Beaumont (Univeristy College London), Jo Briggs (Yale Center for British Art), Michael Hatt (Warwick University), Ruth Livesey (Royal Holloway College, University of London), Sarah Turner (Courtauld Institute), and Anna Vaninskaya (King’s College, Cambridge University).

For more information, email Morna O'Neil,waltercranearchive@gmail.com. This event is supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.