Brash: Los Angeles in 1888 - The 2018 USC/Ruskin Art Club Lecture with William Deverell

Join us for a lecture exploring the Los Angeles of 1888, the year of the founding of the Ruskin Art Club. It is an especially apt year for examining the city poised on all manner of adolescent cusps: growth, identity, ambition, as well as self-doubt, anxiety, and boundless energy, for both good and ill. Hindsight and history help us see the where the city would go, but specific focus on this brash year offers perspective on roads not taken, plans unrealized, visions quirky, odd, or just plain malevolent. The lecture will be preceded by a reception where materials related to the history of the club will be on display.

William Deverell is Director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West and Professor of History at USC. He is a historian of the 19^th and 20^th century American West. His publications explore the environmental, political, social, and cultural history of California and the West. At USC, he also directs the USC Libraries Collections Convergence Initiative. He received his undergraduate degree in American Studies from Stanford and his graduate degrees in history from Princeton.