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MLA 2019 Events The William Morris Society in the United States holds its annual meeting in conjunction with the Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention each year. As the MLA Convention changes locations annually, this meeting offers our members many opportunities to meet up with fellow Morrisians from across the U. S. The 2019 convention in Chicago, IL—which this year coincides with the annual meeting of the American Historical Association —promises to once again be a busy time for attending WMS members, with all our formal events taking place on Friday, January 4, 2019. Our sponsored session this year is on “William Morris: Reflections on Art and Labor” (8:30-9:45 am | Michigan 2 in the Hyatt Regency ) with the following participants and papers: Brandiann Molby (Loyola University Chicago), “The Handcrafted Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Walter Benjamin and the Revolutionary Potential of William Morris’s Decorated Books” Patrick Fessenbecker (Bilkent Univers

After Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of Barack Obama was unveiled at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 2017, the already-successful artist received unprecedented attention. And, in a roundabout way, Kehinde Wiley’s success is also bringing more attention to the designs and general aesthetic of William Morris. This fall, in the first Wiley exhibition since the unveiling of the Obama portrait last year, eleven portraits of Saint Louis citizens are already drawing commentary in the news that the background designs of the portraits evoke the wallpapers designed and manufactured by William Morris. This new show, Kehinde Wiley: Saint Louis , will be held at the Saint Louis Art Museum from October 19, 2018 until February 19, 2019. Some of the references to William Morris wallpapers are more overt than others. The portrait "Robert Hay Drummond, D.D. Archbishop of York and Chancellor of the Order of the Garter" (2018) clearly uses motifs of the ogee tree and pomegra