Thomas Sgouros, Remembered Landscape, 1996. Museum purchase: Gift of the Artist's Development Fund of the Rhode Island Foundation. © The Estate of Thomas Sgouros, courtesy of Cade Tompkins Projects.
Introduction
Variance
In more than 30 works dating from the mid-1700s through today, Variance: Making, Unmaking, and Remaking Disability considers representations of the disabled and/or ill subject and foregrounds how body-mind variance shapes culture and informs technique, style, and form. Touching on topics from institutionalization and neurodiversity to Deaf gain and crip sex, this exhibition reflects on the ways disability has been stigmatized and centers the plurality and history of disability culture.
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.