Ruskin's Skies

Ruskin's Skies opens at the Ashmolean Museum on Saturday 24 October, running from 2 pm to 4 pm in the Western Art Print Room. It's a display of John Ruskin's original watercolour studies of skies and cloud formations, some of them annotated by Ruskin himself with his own observations on pollution and the weather. The session lasts about half an hour, and because space is very limited, booking a slot is recommended.

The display is paired with Tom Payne's performance of Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, Ruskin's prophetic public lecture first delivered in 1884. That performance runs on the same day at Oxford University's Museum of Natural History, and the two go together: the lecture speaks of the disastrous impacts of industrialisation on the air, while the watercolours show the very skies he was watching. Ruskin used to urge his students to 'rise early' and 'always watch the sunrise and the way the clouds break from the dawn', and these studies are exactly that — his close looks at the sky, with his notes on what he saw written right alongside them.

It's all part of IF Oxford, the city's annual science and ideas festival run by The Oxfordshire Science Festival. If you're planning to head over, there's one practical thing to keep in mind: there's no lift access to the Print Room, only stairs. The session runs from 2 pm to 4 pm, it's free with a ticket, and since space is tight, it's worth booking your slot in advance.