Works in Process

Art isn’t always about a finished product. The groups of objects in this exhibition demonstrate how ideas—and even artworks themselves—develop throughout the process of creation. Whether an image translated into a sketch then simplified into a design, a pattern made into an object, or motif preserved through careful documentation and later used as inspiration, these objects speak to one another, demonstrating some of the ways artists work through their ideas.

Line gives shape and form to vision, and it is also an own expressive entity that rewards close study. Whether articulated with a brush, pen, or pencil or carved and impressed, each mark conveys the artist’s thought process.

Curated by Emily Banas, Assistant Curator, Decorative Arts and Design and Wai Yee Chiong, Associate Curator of Asian Art

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (1874–1948), a daughter of Rhode Island senator Nelson W. Aldrich and the wife of John D. Rockefeller Jr., was a lifelong supporter of the arts. Mrs. Rockefeller assembled a remarkable collection of Asian woodblock prints, donating more than 700 Japanese prints to the RISD Museum.

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.