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.
Ceramics student Lindsay Savoie subverts traditional hierarchies that value painting and sculpture more highly than utilitarian art forms like pottery and photography.
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.
A graphic design student at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Marta Jeż describes her virtual exhibition project and new possibilities of translating physical exhibitions into digital forms.
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.
A student in a RISD course on pan-African aesthetics, inspired by a photograph in the collection, explores Black youth occupying space in movements from La Sape to Noirwave.
Juxtaposing Iké Udé’s photography with Sun Ra’s notions of "mythocracy" and Black Utopia, Ann-Maree Quaynor seeks to reclaim Black Dignity and Existence.
RISD student Tito Crichton-Stuart analyzes Robert Mapplethorpe’s exoticisation of the black body and proposes potential acquisitions that could serve as counterpoints in the collection
Artist and student Jade Cannata creates a chart describing the racial demographics of three all-inclusive resorts in locations with strong historical connections to colonialism, showing the effects of history on the present
Jane'a Johnson's students explore how blackness is created and recreated as a visual phenomenon in self-directed essays drawing on museum visits and course texts
In 1971, a group of radical students in Providence produced stirring silkscreen posters. Their images contributed to the vibrant visual culture of antiwar protest.
Students in Mariela Yeregui's Decolonial E-Textiles class create radical, critical, situated, and anticolonial projects that combine textile techniques with simple and low-tech electronic mechanisms.
Robert Emlen, curator at Brown University, and furniture designer, Timothy Philbrick examine the craftsmanship, features, and significance of the Goddard/Townsend desk and bookcase.