Tour Victorian Radicals with Chiyo Ishikawa

“It’s incredibly rich and it’s a way of making us rethink what radical is.”

– Chiyo Ishikawa

Tour Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement with SAM’s Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art and Curator of European Painting and Sculpture, Chiyo Ishikawa, and find out what was so sensational about the Pre-Raphaelites Brotherhood.

As industrialization brought sweeping changes to British life, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The young artists were reacting to the traditional training methods of the Royal Academy of Arts, which they regarded to be as formulaic as industrial methods of production. While these works of art may not offend the sensibilities of today’s audiences, they were referred to as “Lamentable and revolting . . .” and as “. . . Monstrously perverse . . .” by their contemporary critics.

Visit SAM through September 8 to see 150 works from the 19th century Britain and consider for yourself what makes art radical.