The Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The exhibition The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2011-12) explored the idea of ‘art for art’s sake’ and the ‘house beautiful’ in Victorian art, design, fashion and literature, and included artists such as Burne-Jones, Whistler, Rossetti, William Morris and Aubrey Beardsley. It was a critical success, and the most popular exhibition of the year at the V&A. As the Burlington Magazine noted (June 2011), it was informed by Elizabeth Prettejohn's book Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting (Yale University Press, 2007, awarded a Historians of British Art Book Award). Prettejohn sat on the V&A exhibition advisory committee, and contributed two essays to the exhibition catalogue: ‘Aestheticism in Painting’ and ‘Late Paintings’.

Online reviews

Richard Dorment, 'The Cult of Beauty', The Telegraph, 11 April 2011

BBC Radio 4, Front Row (including an interview with Elizabeth Prettejohn)