This is the first of a series of research and digitisation projects connecting across Ruskin collections separated by institutions and disciplines, starting with the Houghton Library, Harvard University.

This project examines the techniques underlying Ruskin’s theoretical and practical instruction on the uses of the colour blue. This study uses advanced analytical imaging techniques to scan and identify blue pigments in paintings from Ruskin collections at Oxford, Lancaster, and Harvard Universities: from hyperspectral imaging, X-ray fluorescence, X-ray diffraction (XRD) to fiber optics reflectance spectroscopy (FORS). The project will lead to an exhibition at Brantwood and related publications.

‘The Radiant Word’
This research and exhibition project will draw from Ruskin’s own medieval collections in The Ruskin, along with loan requests to the National Library of Scotland, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Museums Sheffield, and the Getty, with a number of planned workshops as we develop the exhibition and proposed digitization of some of the linked works.

'Revisioning Ruskin’ places Ruskin alongside his nineteenth-century scientific contemporaries, exploring his influence on science and society, in his time and our own. Starting with the research-led digital exhibit, ‘Painting with Sunlight’, at the Royal Society Summer Show in 2021, the project continued with the exhibition series and related publications, ‘John Ruskin in the Age of Science’ from 2022–2024, and currently with the Ashmolean Museum, starting in 2025.

This project explores engagement with audiences and access through research in digital innovation, including Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and 3D modelling. Prototypes have been tested with diverse user groups at exhibitions in London, Cumbria, Edinburgh and Kuala Lumpur and in Lancaster University’s Data Immersion Suite.

Ruskin’s spectacular public lectures were enhanced by hand-crafted models, casts and lecture diagrams – some of which haven’t been seen since Ruskin himself used them on stage. This ongoing research and curatorial project centres on Ruskin’s 44 large scale lecture diagrams, used as visual aids for his lectures between 1883 and 1885, including his lecture on ‘Tree Twigs’ at the Royal Institution in London in 1869, examining ‘the connection between the laws of nature and those of art'.

Drawing on portraits, busts, medallions and caricatures of and by Ruskin, this research-led exhibition, in collaboration with Brantwood, will examine Ruskin’s critical view of portraiture. He held it an inferior genre compared to architectural and landscape painting, but acknowledged the technical proficiency of artists such as Dürer, Holbein, Van Eyck, who portrayed their subjects with psychological truth and moral clarity.

Working with postgraduate students at Lancaster University, this project explored how machine learning can reveal hidden patterns in Ruskin’s correspondence. We digitised a sample of Ruskin’s letters and ran a series of experiments using the digital transcriptions to explore establishing new possibilities for research and digitisation of the c10,000 manuscript letters in The Ruskin Whitehouse Collection.

Based in the collections of the V&A (London) and Musée du quai Branly (Paris), and aligned with the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the project explored the role of the museum in building knowledge about the future through collections, display and relations with publics. Project research on temporality, interdisciplinarity and the museum continues through the examination of proleptic objects.

This project takes Ruskin’s view on the dehumanising impact of modern technologies in his essay on war as a starting point for a research and exhibition programme on the subject of ‘Killing at a Distance’. In partnership with the Centre for War and Diplomacy, Lancaster University. . It explores the interplay between the technologies of art and war, historicity, and moral and legal discourse centred on the question of what it means to kill beyond line of sight.