October 15, 2010 — University of Virginia art professor Douglas Fordham will give a tour of the U.Va. Art Museum's exhibition "From Classic to Romantic: British Art in an Age of Transition" on Oct. 30 from 2 to 3 p.m. 

This exhibition of art from the 18th and early 19th centuries presents the culmination of neoclassicism and the burgeoning of romanticism, which accompanied the radical transformation of the arts and sciences during this time.

Highlighting specific works of art in the exhibition, Fordham will discuss the extraordinary stylistic variation that marked this dynamic moment in British art history. From the neo-classical rigor of John Flaxman's drawings to the expressiveness of William Blake's "visions," British artists in the late 18th and early 19th centuries possessed a tremendous appetite for formal and thematic experimentation.

Fordham is an assistant professor of art history in the College of Arts & Sciences' McIntire Department of Art. He earned his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2003, and he specializes in 18th- and early 19th-century European art, with an emphasis on British visual culture. He is the author of "British Art and the Seven Years' War: Allegiance and Autonomy" (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010) and a co-editor, with Tim Barringer and Geoff Quilley, of "Art and the British Empire" (Manchester University Press, 2007), which won the best multi-author book award from the Historians of British Art.

The U.Va. Art Museum offers its Saturday Special Tours on the third or fourth Saturday of every month from 2 to 3 p.m. These tours offer the opportunity to join faculty, curators and scholars as they explore a variety of focused topics related to museum collections and exhibitions.

Saturday Special Tours are free and open to the public. For information, call 434-243-2050 or e-mail museumoutreach@virginia.edu. The museum is located at 155 Rugby Road, one block from the Rotunda.