Art | RISD Museum

Year in Review 2023 / 2024

Art

Exhibitions
New Acquisitions
Loans
Publications

Our collection currently contains more than 100,000 works of art and design dating from ancient times to the present including paintings, sculpture, photography, prints, decorative arts, costume and textiles, and furniture from all over the world. Objects enter the collection via purchases with our acquisition funds, as well as gifts and donations from collectors, artists, and others.

Sharing our collection with the public is central to our mission, and this section outlines all of the work involved in acquiring, documenting, displaying, interpreting, protecting, and storing these objects to make that sharing possible.

Exhibitions

The RISD Museum presents several temporary and traveling exhibitions as well as new collection displays each year, which are shaped by insights from curators, educators, artists, students, and neighbors. These projects often include associated publications, symposia, programs, and/or other virtual and in-person events.

Five Black people, dressed in eccentric clothing, overlapped onto a digitally-drawn cityscape background. The person in front, wearing tan boots wrapped in tin foil, holds a cardboard sign that reads “Whatever Helps. Please. Thank You.”

A white clay object, curved and adorned with with Cambodian style ornamentation and a red streak running through it, is wrapped by red silk threads and suspended in the air on a white backdrop.

A sculptural piece of jewelry made up of a lime green cluster of shards and teal gems with vibrant orange accents, mounted on a slender, vertical, mint-green post.

New Acquisitions

The RISD Museum actively collects art and design objects representing global artistic traditions from ancient times to the present. In FY 2024, the RISD Museum acquired 629 total objects through purchases and gifts. Purchases focused on artists from groups underrepresented in the collection with 89% of acquisition funds allocated to works by such artists.

Woven tapestry of a person with braided hair looking off in the distance, displayed on a wooden hand loom. Red and beige geometric patterns sit atop the person's face.

Sculptural chair with intertwined glossy colorful balloon-like shapes arranged in an abstract manner against a stark white backdrop.

Abstract print of a stylized, colorful bird made out of various organic shapes against a gray background. Etched lines and eraser-like marks are seen throughout the background and foreground.

Loans

The RISD Museum regularly loans objects from our collection to other museums and institutions. These may be short-term loans (for a time-limited exhibition, for example) or long-term (such as a gallery reinstallation that may last several years). Lending objects from our collection for display in other places supports our mission to share important works of art and design with the public, and it also helps to raise awareness of the museum and the collection..

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Publications

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch is the companion publication to the exhibition of the same name. It was released in February 2024 by Yale University Press. Co-edited by Sarah Ganz Blythe, Dominic Molon, and Kajette Solomon, this volume includes contributions by art historians Amalia K. Amaki, Horace D. Ballard, Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, Maureen O’Brien, and Stephanie Sparling Williams; artists Simone Leigh and Kelly Taylor Mitchell; and a conversation between Tomaquag Museum director Lorén M. Spears and Narragansett historian Mack H. Scott III.

Manual

Manual: a journal about art and its making, the museum's journal, uses our collections, exhibitions, and collaborations as an impetus for essays and interviews, artist interventions, and archive highlights. A fusion of academic arts journal and design magazine, Manual is a resource for conversations about art, design, and the impact of creative making by artists and designers, curators, educators, and scholars.

Manual 19: Many Moons

Manual 19: Many Moons looks up to the skies to consider astronomy and space travel and ponder broader, more ancient associations, including the night in all its inky glory; tides, time, and calendars; the feminine; reflections and mirrors; love and enduring companionship; and lunacy, strangeness, and magic.

Images