RISD Museum curators Jan Howard and Gina Borromeo share the RISD Museum’s process for deaccessioning a bronze head of an oba from Benin prior to its return to Nigeria

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.

Dear Museum Friends,

As the world bears witness to the recent tragedies of George Floyd’s death, the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and the countless numbers of Black people before them, it’s difficult to feel like I have anything new to say on a subject that I should meet with respectful listening, but as the director of this institution it is my job to lead both in words and in deeds.

The American and European jewelry collection at the RISD Museum, part of the Decorative Arts and Design Department, is made up of more than 800 works, including necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and rings from the medieval period to present day.

Inspired by the European galleries, graphic designer Kelly Walters explores 19th-century notions of exoticism and beauty through the creation of a folded broadsheet poster.

After a half-century's journey, Gorham's magnificent writing table and chair made for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair returned home to Providence.

A glimpse into the lives of international merchants in Canton, China.

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

Reginald Marsh, the son of American artists Fred Dana Marsh and Alice Randall Marsh, was born in Paris in 1898.

This rare example of Gorham's "Mythologique" flatware service was purposefully left unfinished as they are samples, combining elaborate hand-worked detail with mechanized brute force.

Safely stored away during gallery renovations, all 196 pieces of RISD's Gilded Frost and Jet Chandelier by Dale Chihuly have been expertly reinstalled.

Books of hours made during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance were products of collaboration between scribes, illuminators, bookbinders, and, sometimes, the original patron or owner. A recent acquisition of a French book of hours made in Rouen around 1510 tells the story of this collaboration through the structure of its contents, iconography, and assembly.

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.

Recorded on 05.03.19.

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.

John Steuart Curry's images of the circus provide us with an insider's look at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in the 1930s.

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.

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.

A summer intern creates an article of clothing inspired by the meticulous logistics of collections care.

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

Unfinished paintings by Eastman Johnson, John Singer Sargent and Mary Cassatt reveal new techniques that emerged in France in the second half of the 19th century.

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