
Introduction
Raid the Icebox Now with Pablo Helguera
Inventarios/Inventories explores the personal and domestic contexts of artworks, particularly as they exist in artists’ personal lives and working environments and the homes of their close family and collaborators. Drawing upon the RISD Museum’s Nancy Sayles Day Collection of Latin American art, Pablo Helguera has collaborated with living Latin American artists and the families, close friends, and collaborators of those no longer alive to provide a view of the domestic lives of artworks. The project is also a tribute to the exhibition history of the RISD Museum and the legacy of former director Alexander Dorner, who created immersive environments to enhance the visitor’s experience. The exhibition is accompanied by public programs and performances developed in collaboration with the participating artists.
Pablo Helguera is a Mexican artist who lives and works in New York. His projects span installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, socially engaged art, and performance, drawing inspiration from topics ranging from history, pedagogy, and sociology. His work often takes on unusual forms of presentation, which have included road trips, phonographic recordings, musical performances, and books.
Raid the Icebox Now is made possible by a lead grant from the National Endowment for the Arts with additional support from the RISD Museum Associates, Judy and Robert Mann, Taylor Box Company, and a generous in-kind gift from Meyer Sound Laboratories.
RISD Museum is supported by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, through an appropriation by the Rhode Island General Assembly and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and with the generous partnership of the Rhode Island School of Design, its Board of Trustees, and Museum Governors.