Introduction
Drawing Conclusions
Visual art—like storytelling—communicates meaning, but rarely does an artwork hold a single meaning. A great pleasure of art is that each viewer brings her or his own experience to a work, often revealing many ways to interpret it.
Drawn from the Museum’s collection of works on paper, this exhibition explores the multivalence of narrative in contemporary art. It presents a diverse collection of works that tell stories, blending the public and personal, the real and fictional. Whether serving as a stage for surreal dreaming or a site to ponder history and identity, each artwork draws on an expanded understanding of narrative and the forms it can take. We invite viewers to draw their own conclusions.
The exhibition was organized with the help of Emilia Mickevicius, PhD candidate at Brown University, and Jagdeep Raina, MFA candidate at RISD, both assistants in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.
