Ruskin VR

The Ruskin and Lancaster University’s Innovation Team

Working with the Innovation Team at Lancaster University, The Ruskin has developed Virtual and Augmented Reality experiences, including an AR Cyanometer to explore Ruskin’s uses of the colour blue, and VR experiences, exploring Ruskin’s ideas and showcasing the collection. These were piloted in Lancaster and London in 2024, and presented at a British Council event in Malaysia in February 2025, and at the Windermere Science Festival and Explore Art, Newcastle in May 2025. Early work on 3D modelling for a handling Collection is underway with the Lancaster University Engineering Team, who developed the award-winning 3D models of artworks for the partially-sighted and the blind.

Co-curated with Graham Hogg (National Library of Scotland) in Summer 2025, the exhibition ‘Images of Italy (1480 to 1900)’ was accompanied by both printed and digital exhibition guides developed by The Ruskin – the latter showing three films, linked to a series of interactive Augmented-Reality postcards. The invention of photography in the 19th century provided a new technology to record Italy, and the display includes examples of photography from the National Library of Scotland’s collections alongside Ruskin’s daguerreotypes from The Ruskin Whitehouse Collection.