WILMINGTON, DE.- The Delaware Art Museum and the University of Delaware Library are pleased to welcome Dr. Thad Logan, the 2009 Fellow in Pre-Raphaelite Studies, for the presentation of her lecture “Rossetti’s Drawers” on Wednesday, March 4, at 4:00 p.m. at the Museum. This lecture is free and open to the public. A reception to meet Dr. Logan for all attendees will follow, and the Pre-Raphaelite galleries will be open at this time. Dr. Logan is a Lecturer in English and the Humanities in the Department of English at Rice University . She is the second recipient of the Fellowship in Pre-Raphaelite Studies jointly offered by the University of Delaware Library and the Delaware Art Museum .

Dr. Logan’s talk will focus on the clothing, jewelry, and bric-a-brac that Dante Gabriel Rossetti collected, and how those things made their way into his paintings. (The title “Rossetti’s Drawers” refers to comments by a number of his friends regarding the overflowing drawers, cabinets, and cupboards at Rossetti’s house in Chelsea .) Dr. Logan’s research will be published in a forthcoming book on the subject. Her previous publications include The Victorian Parlour: A Cultural Study (Cambridge University Press, 2001), a study of the decoration of the middle-class Victorian home and the objects collected within it.

The University of Delaware Library / Delaware Art Museum joint Fellowship in Pre-Raphaelite Studies is awarded to scholars conducting significant research in the lives and works of the Pre-Raphaelites and their friends, associates, and followers. For more information about the Fellowship, please visit http://www.delart.org/education/fellowships.html

Founded in 1912, the Delaware Art Museum is home to the largest and most important collection of British Pre-Raphaelite art in the United States . Assembled largely by the Wilmington industrialist Samuel Bancroft, Jr., at the turn of the century (with significant subsequent additions), the collection includes paintings and drawings by all the major and minor Pre-Raphaelite artists, as well as decorative arts, prints, photographs, manuscripts, and rare books. The Helen Farr Sloan Library & Archives, with a reference collection of 30,000 volumes, holds Samuel Bancroft’s papers and correspondence, a rich source for the history of collecting and provenance which also contains significant manuscript material by and about the Rossettis. For more information, please call 302-571-9590 or visit www.delart.org

The University of Delaware Library has broadly based and comprehensive collections—books, periodicals, electronic resources, microforms, government publications, databases, maps, manuscripts, media, and access to information via the Internet—which provide a major academic resource for the study of literature and art. Many printed and manuscript items related to the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates are in the Special Collections Department, including major archives relating to the Victorian artist and writer, George Adolphus Storey, and to the bibliographer and forger, Thomas J. Wise. The Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, associated with the Special Collections Department, focuses on British literature and art of the period 1850 to 1900, with an emphasis on the Pre-Raphaelites and on the writers and illustrators of the 1890s. Its rich holdings comprise 5,000 first and other editions (including many signed and association copies), manuscripts, letters, works on paper (including drawings by Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti), and ephemera. For more information, please call 302-831-2965 or visit www.lib.udel.edu