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.
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.
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.
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.
There's always more to be discovered: Hidden in plain sight since the 11th century, two inscriptions were found during conservation of the Museum's Dainichi Buddha.
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.
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, Brown’s graduate students in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture undertook an investigation of the wood sculptures in the RISD Museum collections.