Our collection currently contains more than 100,000 works of art and design dating from ancient times to the present including paintings, sculpture, photography, prints, decorative arts, costume and textiles, and furniture from all over the world. Objects enter the collection via purchases with our acquisition funds, as well as gifts and donations from collectors, artists, and others.
Sharing our collection with the public is central to our mission, and this section outlines all of the work involved in acquiring, documenting, displaying, interpreting, protecting, and storing these objects to make that sharing possible.
In This Section
The RISD Museum presents several temporary and traveling exhibitions as well as new collection displays each year, which are shaped by insights from curators, educators, artists, students, and neighbors. These projects often include associated publications, symposia, programs, and/or other virtual and in-person events.
Exhibitions at RISD Museum 2022/2023
Helina Metaferia: We've Been Here Before - July 2, 2022 - August 27, 2023
Inherent Vice: Hidden Narratives - July 23, 2022 - January 15, 2023
Take Care - August 20, 2022 - March 12, 2023
Past Made Present: Dutch Shadows in the Black Atlantic - September 3, 2022 - August 6, 2023
Being and Believing in the Natural World: Perspectives from the Ancient Mediterranean, Asia, and Indigenous North America - October 22, 2022 - June 4, 2023
Fountain: Dorner Prize 2022 - October 24, 2022 - February 5, 2023
On Paper: Gifts from Paula and Leonard Granoff - October 29, 2022 - April 16, 2023
Sensing Fashion - February 11, 2023 - July 30, 2023
Passive Pollination: Dorner Prize 2023 - March 25, 2023 - October 22, 2023
Eating in Edo - April 1, 2023 - October 8, 2023
(un)heard voices: Dorner Prize 2023 - April 11, 2023 - June 4, 2023
The Performative Self Portrait - May 13, 2023 – November 12, 2023
▲Helina Metaferia, American (b. 1983 in Washington, DC; works in New York and Providence), Headdress 42; From We’ve Been Here Before, 2022. Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund. RISD Museum, Providence, RI.
For more than a century, the RISD Museum has been actively collecting art and design objects representing global artistic traditions from ancient times to the present. In any given year, several hundred objects enter the collection through donation, purchase, and bequest. As part of the museum's anti-racist work plan, the RISD Museum is committed to spending at least 75% of our acquisitions budget on work by underrepresented makers.* In fiscal year 2023, the museum spent $TK on new acquisitions from our endowed acquisitions fund, $TK (TK%) of which went toward the purchase of work by BIPOC, women, and LGBTQIA2S+ artists and makers. Acquisitions come into the museum collection by donation, bequest, or purchase. Purchased objects are paid for with funds that are restricted to this purpose and cannot legally be spent elsewhere at the museum. That is, these dollars are earmarked specifically to expand our collection in order to enrich the learning experiences of our visitors.
Highlights from our recent acquisitions include works by two RISD Native American alumnae: "Breach: Logbook 21/Nebulous/Artifice CSW2" by Courtney Leonard (Shinnecock and RISD MFA 2008, Ceramics) as well as "Reincarnation" and "Shard" by Rose B. Simpson (Kah'p'oo Owinge/Santa Clara Pueblo and RISD MFA 2011, Ceramics); work by Emma Amos; two works by Gee’s Bend quilters Ruth Pettway Mosley and Sally Bennett Jones; and a painting by RISD alumnus Nathaniel Oliver, which was the first sale to a museum by HOUSING, the Black-owned and operated gallery that represents him.
* The term "underrepresented" is imperfect, but we use it to refer to people who are historically and presently excluded from museums, including but not limited to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), LGBTQIA2S+ people, people with disabilities, and women.
▲ Helina Metaferia, Headdress 42, from We’ve Been Here Before, 2022. Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund.
Providing access to the collection in the galleries and online offers opportunities to deeply engage with art, artists, ideas, and perspectives that can be unexpected, inspiring, and complex. As part of our open access policy, we provide information about our collection objects on the museum's website. This includes everything from dimensions and materials to how an object came into the collection. Our Creative Commons Universal dedication means that digital images of any objects in the public domain are also available for any purpose. New digital products for which the RISD Museum is not the sole rights holder—for example a photograph of a copyrighted artwork—are made available for fair use as defined in the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 (17 U.S.C, section 107). We want our collection, scholarship, and interpretive content to be accessed, distributed, and reused by everyone.
The RISD Museum regularly loans objects from our collection to other museums and institutions. These may be short-term loans (for a time-limited exhibition, for example) or long-term (such as a gallery reinstallation that may last several years). Lending objects from our collection for display in other places supports our mission to share important works of art and design with the public, and it also helps to raise awareness of the museum and the collection.
Conservation encompasses many activities that ensure the safety and longevity of our collection objects, including cleaning and polishing, repairs, removal or mitigation of hazardous materials, matting and framing, material identification, photography, stabilization, and addressing proper storage needs. Applying preventive conservation techniques ensures that objects can be shared with the public in a manner that is safe for staff, visitors, and the objects alike. The number of objects treated and re-housed each year can vary widely, depending on the size, medium, and the extent of any deterioration.
Some of our work also involves deaccessioning objects, meaning they are removed from our collection after thorough research by curatorial staff and approval by the museum’s Fine Arts Committee and Board of Governors. After deaccessioning, an object can then be given to another institution, sold, or returned to a rightful owner. The RISD Museum is committed to work transparently toward deaccessioning, repatriating, and making restitution for collection objects with problematic histories of ownership.
The museum has a long history of publishing books that accompany our exhibitions and special projects and explore our collections. For many years these publications were issued only in print, but after working in partnership with Oomph, Inc., to develop an open-source platform called Ziggurat in 2019, the museum now also produces dynamic digital publications.
Manual
Manual: a journal about art and its making, the museum's journal, uses our collections, exhibitions, and collaborations as an impetus for essays and interviews, artist interventions, and archive highlights. A fusion of academic arts journal and design magazine, Manual is a resource for conversations about art, design, and the impact of creative making by artists and designers, curators, educators, and scholars.
Manual 18 explores human interactions with the natural world, from frank awe and deep appreciation of the immediate moment to eternal questions and ancient unfinished business. This issue of Manual complements the exhibition Being and Believing in the Natural World, co-curated by Gina Borromeo, Wai Yee Chiong, and Sháńdíín Brown, on view at the RISD Museum this past year.
▲ Manual, Issue 18 — Nature
Special Projects
RISD Grad Show 2023 highlights the creativity of students at all stages of the thesis process, from sketches and drafts to completed works. The Grad Show was presented both as an in-person exhibition at the Rhode Island Convention Center as this digital publication that showcased work by RISD grad students across 18 advanced-degree programs.
▲ RISD Grad Show 2023 homepage.