This fall the RISD Museum Lucy Truman Aldrich Porcelain Gallery reopened with its cabinets filled with engaging figures and a diverse array of tableware. Comprising nearly 180 objects from the museum's collection, this new installation focuses on the role that porcelain played in eighteenth-century life.

Construction with Central Anchor is an image that I return to frequently with students in K-12 classrooms and in the RISD Museum.

The man in this painting lived in the same era and region as some of colonists seen in this gallery.

An eclectic mix of North African, Moorish, Middle Eastern, and Japanese aesthetics, this desk and table are the original creations of Italian designer Carlo Bugatti.

Painting student Davis Lloyd recollects stumbling across an unlikely source of inspiration, and connection between ancient art and contemporary painting.

In this durational performance, artist Becci Davis attempted to repair the ancestral wounds of American history, through a series of deliberate gestures.

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.

A jade lithophone from 18th-century China offers insight to the significant role of ritual music in ancient China—as an essential part of state rite to assert the legitimacy of reign.

RISD Museum intern Alicia Valencia (RISD 2015, Furniture) explains how the act of looking closely formed her impressions on Samuel Gragg's Elastic armchair.

In the flood of digital-ness that comprises our daily experience, it can be easy to forget that most of what all of our complex devices are doing is simply counting. It's no coincidence that the word digital comes from digits, our fingers, that most elementary of counting machines.

The woman in Frank W. Benson's Lady Trying on a Hat has always been a character who caught my eye during visits to the Museum. From her averted gaze to the contrast between her white dress and the black hat, she is poised to play the lead role on the stage that Benson created.

Dubbed a travel coat by artist and designer Christina Kim, this is a garment made for journeys long and far, both real and imagined, for traversing territories in the mind as much as in the physical world.