Robert Hewison in Conversation with Jorge Otero-Pailos
Jorge Otero-Pailos, director of Columbia GSAPP's Historic Preservation Program, speaks with British cultural historian Robert Hewison during the Spring 2017 Semester, when Hewison taught the course \u201cJohn Ruskin and the 19th Century\u201d at Columbia GSAPP. They discuss Hewison\u2019s life-long fascination and study of John Ruskin, teaching students to draw as means of exploring truth, and the influence of Ruskin\u2019s thinking on the field of preservation in particular through his study of Venice. The conversation took place in advance of Hewison\u2019s lecture \u201cJohn Ruskin: The Argument of the Eye\u201d, held at the School on February 16, 2017. \n\u201cRuskin was an expert in interdisciplinarity, long before interdisciplinarity had been invented. To study Ruskin, you have to study literature, you have to understand art history, you also have to be prepared to think about geology, to think about botany; and you\u2019ve got to think about economics, political economy and all those things. Because as Ruskin\u2019s mind expanded away from just writing about art and architecture, the next step was to write about society, political economy, and so on.\u201d \n\u2014Robert Hewison