Dr. Malcolm Warner, senior curator at The Kimbell Art Museum , will deliver a free lecture entitled “Victorian Avant-Garde: John Everett Millais and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.” The lecture will be held in The Kimbell Art Museum’s auditorium on Wednesday, March 23, at 12:30 p.m.

The world’s expert on Millais (1829–1896), Dr. Warner will discuss the development of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. A group of artists who considered British art to be in a state of decadence, the Pre-Raphaelites dedicated themselves to painting moral and religious subjects as naturally and as honestly as possible. They worked in meticulous detail and valued truth above beauty, questioning the still-dominant Renaissance aesthetic of the “ideal.” In their choice of name they signaled an admiration for pre-Renaissance art (before the revered 16th-century Italian painter Raphael) that was deeply antiestablishment. In many ways they were modern art’s first rebellious avant-garde. One of the works Dr. Warner will discuss in his lecture is Millais’s “A Huguenot,” 1851–52, a Pre-Raphaelite masterpiece on loan to the Kimbell from the Makins Collection through August 28.

Dr. Warner has lectured, taught, and published extensively for both scholarly and more general audiences. He earned a Ph.D. in the History of European Art and Architecture at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, in 1985, and a B.A. at the same institution in 1974. He has organized a number of notable exhibitions including “Millais: Portraits” for the

National Portrait Gallery in London, “The Victorians: British Painting in the Reign of Queen Victoria, 1837–1901” for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, “The Pre-Raphaelites” for the Tate Gallery in London, and the Kimbell’s most recent exhibition, “Stubbs and the Horse.”

Dr. Warner has served as senior curator at The Kimbell Art Museum since January 2002. Prior to his appointment to the Kimbell, he served as senior curator of paintings and sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art, in New Haven, Connecticut (1999–2001), having joined the center as curator in 1996. He previously served as curator of European art (1992–96) and curator of prints and drawings (1990–96) at the San Diego Museum of Art; research curator in the department of European painting at the Art Institute of Chicago (1988–90); and visiting assistant professor at the University of Manchester, in England (1984–85). He is currently writing the catalogue raisonné of Millais’s works.

The Kimbell Art Museum hours: Tuesdays–Thursdays and Saturdays, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.;
Fridays, noon–8 p.m.; Sundays, noon–5 p.m.; closed Mondays.