Skip to main content
Home

Main navigation

  • Visit
  • Exhibitions & Events
  • Art & Design
  • Give
  • Search

Visit Main Menu Block

  • Hours & Admission
  • Accessibility & Amenities
  • Tours & Group Visits
  • Visitor Guidelines

Exhibitions and Events Main Menu Block

  • Exhibitions
  • Events

Art and Design Main Menu Block

  • Collection
  • Collection Research
  • Past Exhibitions
  • Watch / Listen / Read

Footer Main

  • Become a Member
  • Who We Are
  • Opportunities
  • Rent the Museum
Andrew Lord, Tasting. Richard Brown Baker Fund for Contemporary British Art

Multi-Part Art

Contemporary Works in the Collection
July 11, 2008 - March 29, 2009
Andrew Lord, Tasting. Richard Brown Baker Fund for Contemporary British Art

Introduction

The history of art has a rich tradition of multi-part compositions. Renaissance altarpieces and narrative cycles composed of a number of separate but related elements, for example, come to mind. Today, contemporary artists working in a variety of materials, styles, and formats are extending the tradition in radically new directions.

This installation presents painting, sculpture, and video by 19 artists. Some of these artworks eliminate any obvious representational content, although several are based on historical events or refer to particular phenomena. A number of recent acquisitions are being exhibited at the Museum for the first time, including a group of works that have been purchased through The Richard Brown Baker Fund for Contemporary British Art, established in 2003. Earlier pieces date back to the 1960s, among them several important examples from the Museum’s Nancy Sayles Day Collection of Modern Latin American Art.

The selection of sculpture is especially broad, ranging from works that feature sewn textiles, glass plates, wood furniture, or ceramics to others made with painted steel or elastic cord. Some consist of a pair of objects, whereas others are composed of many more parts. In some cases, the elements are joined together and shown in a particular configuration, in contrast to those where individual partsare rearranged, displayed separately, or located at a distance from each other. Sequence, juxtaposition, andrepetition are key underlying principles. Despite dissimilari­ties of form and content, all the works gain richness because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Judith Tannenbaum

Exhibition images

Selected Objects

Martin Boyce

Ventilation Grills (Punching through the Clouds)

Allan McCollum

Four Plaster Surrogates
No Image Available

Anna Von Mertens

Black and White

Martin Boyce

We Are Still Here (Think About Why We Are Still Here)

Robert M. Wilson

Stalin Chairs

Joanne Tatham

Now This Has Reached the Limit Conditions of Its Own Rhetoric

Roy McMakin

Chair Set with Mirror
No Image Available

Luis Felipe Noé

Three Doors (Tres Puertas)
  • More objects +

Exhibition Checklist

Multi-Part Art : Contemporary Works in the Collection

July 11, 2008 - March 29, 2009
View Checklist pdf
View Checklist pdf
Download

/

RISD Museum

  •  Facebook
  •  Twitter
  •  Instagram
  •  Vimeo
  •  Pinterest
  •  SoundCloud

Footer Main

  • Become a Member
  • Who We Are
  • Opportunities
  • Rent the Museum

Footer Secondary

  • Image Request
  • Press Office
  • Rent the Museum
  • Terms of Use