Joy for Ever : How to use art to change the world

29 Mar-9 Jun 2019

Overview

This exhibition responds to the 200th birthday of artist, art critic and social reformer John Ruskin with a joyful look at how to use art for social change. Joy for Ever combines the Whitworth’s renowned collection of art and design (itself founded in the 19th Century on Ruskinesque thinking) with archival documents, contemporary installations, a cast of the wall of Westminster Hall, a road building, politics, pictures, a protest on the EBacc by local school children and commissions from Manchester-based design studio Standard Practice and Grizedale Arts from the Lake District. Artists include Helen Allingham, James Hey Davies, Aikaterini Gegisian, Kelly Jayne Jones, William Morris, Jorge Otero-Pailos, John Piper, Samuel Prout, Emily Gertrude Thomson, J.M.W.Turner, William Ward.