RISD Museum intern Alicia Valencia (RISD 2015, Furniture) explains how the act of looking closely formed her impressions on Samuel Gragg's Elastic armchair.
Arlene Shechet discusses the production of works for and the installation design of Arlene Shechet: Meissen Recast with the exhibition's curator, Judith Tannenbaum.
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.
How a project designed to enhance pain management was born and made possible by the collaboration between RISD Museum and the Brown Emergency Medicine Residency.
A wooden “do not touch” partition usually separates the period room in Pendleton House from the public. But one Monday in June, that partition was removed, and museum staff peopled the room.
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.
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.
The history of the Gorham Manufacturing Company is intertwined with that of Providence and Rhode Island. This uniquely local story has provided the opportunity for the RISD Museum to learn from the experiences of community members who have intersected with Gorham's legacy.
Many museums today struggle with confronting their problematic legacies and transforming their current practices to become the diverse, inclusive institutions they aspire to be.
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 late fifteenth-century Virgin and Child was created with subtlety, flexibility, and portability in mind. These features were central to its medieval use—and its use at the RISD Museum.
During the Fall of 2015, Sheila Bonde’s graduate students in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Brown University undertook an investigation of the wood sculptures in the RISD Museum collections. This multi-author paper includes some of their findings.
The future is an abstract concept, hard to decode and difficult to predict. A summer intern reflects on fashion and future in this creative writing piece.
The RISD Museum collection application program interface (API) lays out how our website’s search function operates, aiding discovery of the museum’s collection and allowing collection data to be used in innovative ways.
Aaron Douglas was inspired by ancient and contemporary architecture, visual art and poetry. By exploring his painting and finding connections to poetry, what can we learn about how artists use different artistic styles and art forms to represent the many kinds of work it takes to build societies, both in the past and today?
How are museum collections constructed? Producer Emma Vecchione searches for an answer in examining the police raid of a 1978 art exhibition, a collection of pictures at the RISD Museum, and the family photographs on top of her mother’s television set.
While the sixth-floor galleries are undergoing an extensive renovation, the Museum is carefully studying and conducting conservation work on the monumental 12th-century wooden Dainichi Nyorai Buddha. When the Buddha is returned to its gallery in late spring 2014, it will be stabilized and we'll know much more about the art that went into creating this nearly 10-foot-tall sculpture.
Architect James Stanton-Abbott explains his process for creating a computer-rendered reconstruction of a room in an ancient Roman villa near Pompeii, using images of wall-painting fragments in the RISD Museum and the MFA, Boston.
The discovery of these treasures resembles that of a valuable manuscript. They are a new “Codex Africanus,” not written on fragile papyrus, but in ivory and imperishable brass.