Ruskin Birthday Lecture Series

About the John Ruskin Birthday Lecture

On February 7-8, 2020, we hosted at Notre Dame the conference John Ruskin: Prophet of the Anthropocene, the very last event in a year of international celebrations of Ruskin's 200th birthday. On the evening of February 8, Ruskin's 201st birthday, Clive Wilmer, who had just stepped down at the end of a long tenure as Master of Ruskin's Guild of St George, delivered a keynote address, reflecting on the role of the Guild in the world.

Clive's lecture launched a new annual Ruskin Birthday Lecture Series at Notre Dame, in which an invited speaker would reflect on the role of the arts and humanities to address the crises of the day -- in the spirit of Ruskin, at least, if not always about Ruskin.

In 2021, because of the COVID-19 pandemic (a "crisis of the day" that none of us saw coming as we started planning the lecture in February 2020), we published a Garland of Reflections on pandemics and politics, in lieu of a lecture.

In 2022, Gabriel Meyer, executive director of the Ruskin Art Club in Los Angeles gave the lecture Ruskin, Laudato Si', and the Big Ecological Picture.

The Ruskin Birthday Lecturer for 2023 is Anahid Nersessian of UCLA.

Webinar Link: https://notredame.zoom.us/j/92308652183

The Ruskin Birthday Lecturer for 2024 is Robin Wall Kimmerer

Webinar Link :