The RISD Museum’s 2009 acquisition of the Richard Brown Baker collection included two drawings by the English artist Howard Selina—Cowboy Hat (1974) and Two Boots (1974)—carefully and precisely rendered drawings in graphite on paper of well-worn, utilitarian garments.

Many museums today struggle with confronting their problematic legacies and transforming their current practices to become the diverse, inclusive institutions they aspire to be.

This seven-foot-tall Christ would have been suspended above an altar or screen, the juxtaposition of his damaged body and calm, downward gaze reminding those below him of both his humanity and his divinity. 

In the Middle Ages, several saints were represented as knights in art, making it difficult to identify RISD’s Crusading Saint. This article will explore his possible identities.

This article argues that Simon the Pharisee would have been viewed as an explicitly Jewish character by sixteenth-century viewers.

Devotional representations of Saint Barbara, a Christian martyr whose legend extended across both Western and Eastern medieval worlds, flourished in fourteenth-century Europe. An examination of the Providence Saint Barbara reveals a sculptural tradition with a complex and colorful practices of medieval devotion to the cult of saints.

A summer intern's short story/poem about a cat that investigates the spatial politics of Duchamp’s 'Boîte-en-valise' and also falls in love

A student in a RISD course on pan-African aesthetics contemplates a vinyl record pictured in a Sanlé Sory photograph in the collection, and imagines the songs it contains.

In the January 1920 Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, RISD Museum director L.

In 1971, a group of radical students in Providence produced stirring silkscreen posters. Their images contributed to the vibrant visual culture of antiwar protest.

A summer intern reflects on diversity in the museum's Western European galleries and suggesting curatorial strategies for greater visibility

Drawing in a museum is a way of slowing down and experiencing artwork on a nonverbal level.

Luca Cambiaso used iron gall ink and a quill pen to create this drawing in about 1570. RISD professor Andrew Raftery walks us through the making of iron gall ink and a quill pen, and explains how he copied Cambiaso's drawing.

Inventories have been occurring almost since the beginning of museum practice, but they have changed entirely from their original form.

Curator Maureen C. O'Brien discusses American drawings and watercolors in the RISD Museum collection

Eastman Johnson was raised in Maine in a family of eight children, and

William Stanley Haseltine first studied painting in Philadelphia with t

Plowing on Sunday, from about 1934

Reginald Marsh, the son of American artists Fred Dana Marsh and Alice R

Five works on paper in the RISD Museum’s collection follow the arc of C

For conservators, fabrics incorporating metallic components raise complex questions about construction, materials, and manufacturing techniques, all of which impact how an object will be stabilized and displayed

Embroidery samplers are inextricably linked to an image of colonial America: farmhouses waved sheets of linen like flags of surrender, with fields of flax extending beyond, as far as the eye could

Object Lessons is an ongoing video series on the RISD Museum website that focuses on works in the collection and offers new perspectives.

Why is an Etruscan situla, or pail, one of the most important objects in RISD's ancient collection? We examine its form, decoration, and context to understand its unique place in European archaeology.