Many museums today struggle with confronting their problematic legacies and transforming their current practices to become the diverse, inclusive institutions they aspire to be.

Museum staff and partners have shared our Clinical Arts work at a variety of conferences, symposia, and scholarly publications.

This seven-foot-tall Christ would have been suspended above an altar or screen, the juxtaposition of his damaged body and calm, downward gaze reminding those below him of both his humanity and his divinity. 

A colossal Romanesque head in the RISD collection has yet to be securely identified, but the sheen of his nose suggests that it was rubbed by many penitent hands during the course of this sculpture’s life.

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

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.

This article provides a brief introduction to this finely carved and dynamic sculpture of the Archangel Gabriel.

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 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.

Examining and documenting four Fayum portraits as part of a larger study directed by the J. Paul Getty Museum

Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another.

A study of the elements that pull and push a visitor through the museum’s 3rd and 4th floor spaces

Traditional museum practice has a gigantic carbon footprint. How is the RISD Museum changing its own practices in response to the climate emergency?

An intern's hands-on exploration of antique photomechanical processes in the 21st century

3-D technology expands the ways of seeing and studying RISD Museum's 12th century Dainichi Buddha.