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Introduction

Raid the Icebox Now with Sebastian Ruth

Witnessing
September 13, 2019 - November 28, 2020

Much of my work questions how to integrate musical experiences and the life of a community for mutual benefit. I’ve been inspired by educator John Dewey’s project in the 1930s to find ways of “restoring continuity” between art and everyday life experience. Dewey worried that the formality of art spaces prevented people from seeing art as lively, meaning-rich encounters connected to our sense of purpose as humans in the world. Philosopher Maxine Greene took this a step further and said we can and must “lend works of art our lives”—we must allow ourselves to see art as speaking to our core questions, not in an abstract or cerebral way, but in a way that connects to our memories, our pasts, our lived lives.

In this gallery I’ve created a musical soundtrack for scoradatura (retuned) solo viola based on the blinking lights of the iconic Providence smokestacks, themselves a musical gesture. The works I’ve chosen from the RISD Museum collection seem captivated by a similar impulse—to see the everyday for its beauty. Witnessing invites us to consider our daily lives as aesthetic encounters.

Sebastian Ruth is a musician, educator, and organizer whose work has been in reimagining careers for musicians at the intersection of performance, teaching, and deep community collaboration. Through the work of Community MusicWorks, the organization he founded in 1997, Sebastian and his colleagues have continually experimented with the forms and traditions of music making. Sebastian thanks the following people who were critical to creating this project: Carson Evans, Carolyn Gennari, Erik Gould, and Jeremy Radtke of the RISD Museum, who collaborated on making the film; Jim Moses, who served as recording engineer; Marek Bennett, for noticing the lights and their musical potential; Sarah Ganz Blythe, for revealing the possibilities in working with the RISD Museum’s collections; and Paolo Cardini, who shared this: “Hearing the soundtrack to the smokestacks will cause me to look for music everywhere.” We hope it does the same for you.

Raid the Icebox Now is made possible by a lead grant from the National Endowment for the Arts with support from Taylor Box Company, Pace Gallery, 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.

Events

Talks and Conversations

Witnessing Together

Virtual program via Zoom
April 16, 2020 / 7-8 pm

More Events

Projects & Publications

Publications

Raid the Icebox Now

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Selected Objects

American, probably Connecticut

Windsor Armchair, 1780-1800

American, Rhode Island

Braced Bow-Back Armchair, ca. 1780-1800

American, Boston Massachusetts

Bow-Back Windsor Side Chair, late 1700s

American, Possibly New London Windham County Connecticut

Fan-Back Windsor Side Chair, 1795-1805

American, United States of America

Armchair, 1900s

American, New England

Continuous-Arm Windsor Chair, 1780 - 1800

American, United States of America

Side Chair, 1760-1770

Ma Da

The Foundry, 1944

Utagawa Kuniteru II

Prospering Tokyo: Steam Engine, Horse and Carriages, and Rickshaw (Tokyo jōkisha basha jinriki hanei zu), 1870's

American, Rhode Island

Braced Bow-Back Windsor Chair, 1780-1800

American, Rhode Island

Braced Bow-Back Windsor Chair, 1780-1800

Charles Eames, designer

DCW (Dining Chair Wood), 1948

Utagawa Hiroshige

Lumberyards, Fukagawa (Fukagawa Kiba), 1856

American, Connecticut

Fan-Back Windsor Side Chair, ca. 1790-1800

American, Connecticut Rhode Island

Child's Windsor High Chair, 1770-1800

Attributed to Mr. Hoxie

Braced Bow-Back Windsor Armchair, 1780-1810

American

Side Chair, ca. 1938

Denny Moers

Factory Structures I, Poland, 1999

Salvatore Mancini

Royal Mill, Fiskeville, Rhode Island, 1994

Salvatore Mancini

Atlantic Mill, Providence, 1994

Ian Cozzens

American Woolen Co., Valley Mills, 2002

Thonet Brothers

Child's Chair, ca. 1920

Charles Ephraim Burchfield, designer

The Birches Wallpaper, 1921

Brett Weston

Trees in water, 1960

Allison Bianco

Workin' at the Textile Mill, 2014

Erik Gould

Narragansett Electric Power Plant, Providence, 1992

More objects +

Exhibition Checklist

Raid the Icebox Now with Sebastian Ruth : Witnessing

September 13, 2019 - November 28, 2020
View Checklist PDF

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