3:51 p.m., May 14, 2008--The University of Delaware Library and the Delaware Art Museum have announced that Colin Cruise has been selected as the first Pre-Raphaelite Studies Fellow. The jointly sponsored, one-month fellowship is for scholars conducting significant research in the lives and works of the Pre-Raphaelites and their friends, associates, and followers, which are specialties in the collections of the University of Delaware Library and the Delaware Art Museum.

Colin Cruise, who has written widely on 19th-century art and culture, is spending May in Delaware. He curated the exhibition “Love Revealed: Simeon Solomon and the Pre-Raphaelites” for Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in England in 2005 and is currently working on a project surveying Pre-Raphaelite drawing. He teaches art history at the School of Art, the University of Aberystwyth, Wales.

“I am delighted to be in Delaware and working with the museum and the University Library. It is a unique opportunity for a Pre-Raphaelite fellow,” Cruise said.

“This first Pre-Raphaelite Fellowship builds on the extraordinary strengths of the University of Delaware Library Special Collections, the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection and the Delaware Art Museum. It is a feast for a Pre-Raphaelite scholar,” said Susan Brynteson, May Morris Director of Libraries at UD.

“We are thrilled to welcome Prof. Cruise to Delaware and enthusiastic about helping to advance scholarship on Pre-Raphaelite art through this collaboration with the University of Delaware Library,” said Danielle Rice, executive director of the Delaware Art Museum.

Cruise will give a lecture on “Pre-Raphaelite Drawing: Contexts and Controversies.” at 4 p.m., Tuesday, May 27, at the Delaware Art Museum, 2301 Kentmere Parkway, Wilmington, Del.