A summer intern explores the context of ceremonial objects significant to RISD’s past and present.

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

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

What can we learn about life in ancient Egypt by examining protective symbols on the coffin of a priest named Nesmin?

How do you lay an Egyptian mummy to rest in a museum? Our curator considered a number of factors in orienting Nesmin, RISD's Egyptian mummy, in his new case in the freshly renovated gallery, but found a strange coincidence in her final decision.

A chance meeting between the wife of President Rutherford B. Hayes and Theodore Davis, an illustrator and journalist for "Harper's Weekly", in the White House conservatory produced one of the most extraordinary dinner services.

Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerlan

Cleaning an object can be as much about discovery as it is about removing accumulated dust and grime.

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

Egungun costumes are usually created from a wide variety of carefully chosen fabrics ranging from exquisite samples of local handwoven aso ofi to exotic fabrics imported from aro

For Yorùbá-speaking peoples in West Africa, cloth is equated with their most precious possession, children.

Intern Margaret North finds that every successful treasure hunt has a moment of shining glory.