Detail of illustration from William Blake’s Book of Job.

Blake exhibition opens Jan. 26

Keynote talk: “Blake, the Book and the Word as Art” n Feb. 21, 5:30 p.m., Campbell 153 n Johanna Drucker, Robertson Professor of Media, and Jerome McGann, John Stewart Bryan University Professor, U.Va., and Joseph Visconi, James G. Kenan Professor of English Literature, UNC-Chapel Hill, and editor of the Blake Archive at U.Va.

A special exhibition,“Portions of the Eternal World: Prints by William Blake,” opens at the University of Virginia Art Museum Jan. 26 and runs through
March 31.

Blake, one of the most original and important English artists of the last 200 years, expressed his ideal world through art, poetry and a freedom-loving humane spirituality.

“His fusion of art and poetry in books and prints,” notes exhibition curator Stephen Margulies, “possesses a prophetic power that heralded a new way of merging human imagination and divine insight.”

The exhibit features some of Blake’s powerful black-and-white etchings and engravings, including works such as “Illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy” and “For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise.” Also osn view is some of Blake’s more commercial work on loan from the University’s Albert H. Small Special Collections Library.

The U.Va. Art Museum is open to the public without charge Tuesday through Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m. For more information, visit the museum Web site at www.virginia.edu/artmuseum or call 924-3592.