Lecture: "Useful & Beautiful: William Morris and his Books" (5/6/2013)

Mark Samuels Lasner, senior research fellow, University of Delaware Library, in conversation with Diane Waggoner, associate curator, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art

Monday, 6 May 2013
12 noon
East Building Concourse, Auditorium
National Gallery of Art
Washington, DC

Free and open to the public

William Morris (1834-1896) gained fame as a designer, as a poet, as a socialist, as the founder of the arts and crafts movement, and as the maker of beautiful books at his Kelmscott Press, founded in 1891. In this illustrated conversation with National Gallery of Art curator Diane Waggoner, Mark Samuels Lasner explores Morris's lifelong, multifaceted engagement with print--as a reader, author, collector, calligrapher,  typographer, printer, and publisher--which culminated with the publication of the great Kelmscott Chaucer just before his death.  Samuels Lasner will also touch on his own collecting of Morris and his circle.

More information: www.nga.gov/programs/lectures/index.shtm#morris-books

Selections from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library,  are included in "Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design, 1848-1900" and "Pre-Raphaelites and the Book," exhibitions on view at the National Gallery of Art through 19 May 2013.