January 7, 2011 — Jerome McGann, an English professor in the University of Virginia's College of Arts & Sciences, will give a tour of the U.Va. Art Museum's exhibition "From Classic to Romantic: British Art in an Age of Transition" on Jan. 26 from 12 to 1 p.m.

McGann, John Stewart Bryan Professor of English, is a noted expert on Romantic and Victorian literature and the history and theory of texts and has written extensively on Byron, William Blake, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and printmaking as an art form.

He has received numerous fellowships, grants and awards for his achievements, including the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Byron Society of America, the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Keats-Shelley Association of America, and the Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award. In 2002, he received the James Russell Lowell Award from the Modern Language Association naming his book, "Radiant Textuality," as the Most Distinguished Scholarly Book of the Year.

A pioneer in using computer technology to edit texts, McGann was the recipient of the first Richard W. Lyman Award for Distinguished Contributions to Humanities Computing, awarded by the National Humanities Center, for his contributions to the creation of digital archives of the works of Rosetti and Blake.

"From Classic to Romantic" presents the culmination of neoclassicism and the burgeoning of Romanticism, which led to the radical transformation of the arts and sciences during the 18th and early 19th centuries. McGann will discuss the importance of the exhibition's central themes for both literature and the visual arts.

The museum's Lunchtime Talks are offered monthly. These tours provide an opportunity to join curators and faculty as they explore topics related to museum collections and exhibitions.

Lunchtime Talks 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.