About The RISD Museum of Art

A world-class museum in Providence, The RISD Museum of Art was founded as part of Rhode Island School of Design in 1877. Its permanent collection of nearly 80,000 objects includes painting, sculpture, decorative arts, costume, furniture, and other works of art from every part of the world and every era, including objects from Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and art of all periods from Asia, Europe, and the Americas, up to the latest in contemporary art. In addition, the Museum offers a wide array of educational and public programs.

Admission: $8 for adults; $5 for senior citizens; $2 for ages 5-18; $3 for college students with valid ID. Free: Friday, 12-1:30 pm; Sunday, 10 am-1 pm; third Thursday of the month, 5-9 pm; and Free-For-All Saturday (last Saturday of the month). 

PERMANENT COLLECTION GALLERIES: ONGOING
Ancient and Medieval Galleries
Galleries housing Greek sculptures, vases, and coins, Roman frescoes, mosaics, sculptures, and jewelry, and Etruscan bronzes lead to the Medieval gallery, which includes a 12th-century sculpture from the Third Abbey Church of Cluny, France.

Works on Paper Study Area
The end room of the Granoff Galleries is currently installed as a study space for works on paper. It is intended for use by RISD and other college students in groups or independently and is also open to the public. The artworks represent diverse periods and styles of drawing, printmaking, and photography in Europe and America from the Renaissance period through today. The works are arranged to juxtapose subjects and techniques, rather than on a strictly chronological basis. Students may use the space to sketch (with pencil only), to research art-historical periods, or to study historical and contemporary techniques.

Egyptian Galleries
The Museum’s Egyptian galleries feature the coffin and mummy of the priest Nesmin, burial objects, sculptures, and faience.

The Buddha and Asian Galleries
The nine-foot Buddha Dainichi Nyorai, from a medieval temple west of Kyoto, occupies its own gallery, while selections from the Museum’s extensive collections of Asian textiles, ceramics, sculpture, and Japanese prints are exhibited in a series of adjacent spaces dedicated to their display.

Rethinking the Romans: New Views of Ancient Sculpture
The Radeke Entrance features Roman sculpture, a subject that has been undergoing thorough scholarly reassessment for the last two decades. The installation explores the Museum’s small but exceptional holdings in light of new research stressing the aspects unique to Roman culture in terms of the objects’ meaning, use, and context.

Charles L. Pendleton House and Decorative Arts Galleries
Pendleton House, which opened in 1906, is the earliest example of an "American wing" in any museum. It features an extraordinary collection of 18th- and early 19th-century decorative arts and one of the finest American furniture collections in the country, including examples from the Townsend and Goddard circle of colonial Newport craftsmen. Paintings by American masters such as Copley, Stuart, Cole, and Sully also hang in Pendleton House. A major highlight of the department is furniture made by 18th-century Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Newport cabinetmakers. Also on view are fine examples of English pottery, Chinese export porcelain, and a comprehensive survey of American silver, including the Gorham Collection, and jewelry.

“The birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees”:
Flora and Fauna in Ceramic Design and Decoration
This small exhibit features ceramics from the Museum's permanent collection ranging from 17th-century Chinese export vessels to RISD studio pottery of the 1980s and includes a piece of the official dinner service of President Rutherford B. Hayes and popular mid 20th-century mass-produced modern designs.

Wedgwood from the Museum’s Collection
Josiah Wedgwood and Sons (English, Staffordshire, 1759-present) remains a preeminent force in English and, in fact, global ceramics to this day. The company’s success derives from the variety and quality of their offerings, which have attracted the patronage of queens and commoners for nearly 250 years. The pieces on view were selected to represent the diversity of Wedgwood’s work, from a chinoiserie Queen’s-ware plate of around 1775 to a fantastical Fairy Lustre bowl designed by Daisy Makeig-Jones from the late 1910s.

The Japanese Tradition in Studio Pottery
These ceramics offer a brief overview of 20th-century studio pottery with an emphasis on the influence of Japanese everyday wares on the West.

19th-Century Painting, Sculpture, and Decorative Art from the Permanent Collection
Highlights of 19th-century French painting include Manet, Monet, Cézanne, and Rodin. American painting of the 19th- and early 20th centuries is represented with works by Chase, Heade, Homer, Bellows, Sargent, and Cassatt.

PERMANENT COLLECTION CHANGES: The Third Floor of the 1926 Radeke Building is currently undergoing dramatic renovation, transforming former office and collection spaces into new gallery space created by the expansion of the Museum into the Chace Center, opening September 2008.

Press Contact:   
Matt Montgomery, 401/454-6793; mmontgom@risd.edu
Press images are available online at http://intranet.risd.edu/nGallery/albums/110.aspx. Press releases are available online at www.risd.edu/museum_news.cfm