A jade lithophone from 18th-century China offers insight to the significant role of ritual music in ancient China—as an essential part of state rite to assert the legitimacy of reign.
How do you lay an Egyptian mummy to rest in a museum? Our curator considered a number of factors in orienting Nesmin, RISD's Egyptian mummy, in his new case in the freshly renovated gallery, but found a strange coincidence in her final decision.
Over the last 2,000 years, Nesmin has been a priest, a mummy, and a museum exhibit. RISD Museum intern Jonathan Migliori discusses Nesmin's influence in his life.
Isabella McCormick (Brown/RISD 2015) explores the intricacies of the Gorham Narragansett Salad Set and their reflections on Rhode Island culture, insights gained from her meticulous cleaning of the utensils as part of her Mellon Summer Internship in conservation.
Designing furniture for the installation "School House Long House" in the exhibition "Locally Made", designer Simcha Davis looked to Shaker craftsmanship to match the spirit of the space. Download her design.
RISD Museum intern Alicia Valencia (RISD 2015, Furniture) explains how the act of looking closely formed her impressions on Samuel Gragg's Elastic armchair.
Artist Anya Ventura explains the context behind an audio tour and printed guide that she and Anther Kiley created illustrating episodes from the lives of seven objects from the Museum's galleries. Their 2012 work "Fragments" was one of the winning projects in the RISD Museum's annual *Sitings* competition for site-specific installations by RISD degree candidates.
Inspired by Joachim Antonisz Wtewael's "The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis," Josephine Devanbu (RISD/Brown 2015) uses the painting's shapes and density in her newest work.
In the flood of digital-ness that comprises our daily experience, it can be easy to forget that most of what all of our complex devices are doing is simply counting. It's no coincidence that the word digital comes from digits, our fingers, that most elementary of counting machines.
