PROVIDENCE, RI ---- The Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design is pleased to announce its fall 2012 schedule of exhibitions, including a major show of American landscape photographs from the past 150 years in September and sassy signs and sculptures by Mexican artist Alejandro Diaz in November.
- DOWNLOAD THE FALL 2012 EXHIBITION -
For information, images, or to arrange a press visit, contact Lani Stack at lstack@risd.edu or
401 454-6506.
America in View: Landscape Photography 1865 to Now
September 21, 2012 - January 13, 2013
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Lee Friedlander, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1971.
© Lee Friedlander. Museum purchase with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Press preview
Tuesday, September 18, 9:30-11 am
Opening celebration
Thursday, September 20, 5:30-8:30 pm
Free, all welcome
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America in View is a fascinating look at a nation's ambitions, grandeur, and sacrifice through nearly 150 photographs spanning almost 150 years. Ranging from 19th-century albumen prints documenting the pristine drama of the Western landscape to contemporary digital images that construct newly imagined visions of post-industrial America ---- the show is drawn primarily from the Museum's collection. It features objects new to the collection, including major gifts from the late landscape photographer Joe Deal (Provost and Professor, Rhode Island School of Design) and his widow, Betsy Ruppa, as well as gifts from friends and colleagues in Deal's honor.
America in View is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue.
Support for America in View is provided by Dr. Joseph A. Chazan, the Robert Lehman Foundation, and Dr. and Mrs. William G. Tsiaras. Additional support from Mrs. Houghton P. Metcalf, Mary Kate Rittmann, Betsy Ruppa, John W. Smith and Rocky Caldararo, and Mr. and Mrs. William A. Viall II.
RISD Business: Sassy Signs and Sculptures by Alejandro Diaz
November 16, 2012 - June 9, 2013
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Alejandro Diaz, ongoing series of cardboard signs, 2003-present. Courtesy of the artist.
Opening celebration with the artist
Thursday, November 15, 6-8 pm
Free, all welcome
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Take your picture with a life-size model
of the artist's aunt, receive a free toaster* with Museum membership, and visit the Diaz Art Foundation in Alejandro Diaz's exhibition of recent works. Ranging from quaint stereotypes of Mexican identity to current socio-economic and art-world commentary, the text-based works and installations use language as a form of cultural critique and resistance. Conceptual and campy, Diaz's humor-infused politics and use of everyday materials are emblematic of his ongoing involvement with art as a form of entertainment, activism, public intervention, and free enterprise. The exhibition also features Diaz's iconic series of cardboard signs, which the artist will make and sell only on opening night (November 15) for an unbeatable $20 each.
*Some restrictions may apply.
'Grisogorious Places': Edward Lear's Travels
September 14, 2012 - May 19, 2013
Edward Lear is perhaps best remembered for his beloved children's limericks and nonsense rhymes, but his chief vocation was as a landscape painter. Organized in conjunction with the 200th anniversary of Lear's birth, this exhibition highlights the Museum's fine collection of his watercolor sketches, created during his many journeys to, as he put it, "grisogorious places" ---- regions far away from his native England. Replete with Lear's notations about light, color, and time, the sketches demonstrate his keen sensitivity to the places and people he encountered.
Double-and-Add:
Angela Bulloch | Haroon Mirza | Peter Campus | Anthony McCall
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Angela Bulloch, Copper 2, 2011. Richard Brown Baker Fund for Contemporary British Art. © Angela Bulloch.
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November 23, 2012 - May 5, 2013
Double-and-Add plays on a mathematical term used in binary coding, referencing a computational function found in electronic and digital processing. The four featured artists ---- Angela Bulloch, Haroon Mirza, Peter Campus, and Anthony McCall ---- use time-based media (video, sound, programmed light) to investigate the sensory transmission of information through seemingly immaterial systems such as algorithms, electricity, and RGB-light. Recent acquisitions of works by Bulloch (Copper 2, 2011) and Mirza (Panasonic2, 2011) are on view for the first time at the Museum, shown alongside a video projection by Campus (Divide, 2001), and a historical slide projector piece by McCall (Miniature in Black and White, 1972).
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Unknown artist, Flemish, Fireworks around the Antwerp Cathedral, engraving, in the book Pompa Introitus Honori Serenissimi Principis Ferdinandi (Antwerp: 1642). Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund.
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The Festive City
December 21, 2012 - July 14, 2013
Elaborate festivals transformed European cities from the 16th to 18th centuries. Occasions such as coronations and royal visits, civic and religious processions, and carnival races used public spaces as an interactive backdrop on a scale rarely seen today ---- with dazzling ephemeral architecture and decorations, impressive firework displays, music, theatrics, and free food and drink. The Festive City brings together rarely-seen festival prints and books, among our only traces of these staggeringly expensive but fleeting events. Drawn from the collections of the RISD Museum, the John Hay Library at Brown University, and local collector Vincent J. Buonanno, these works are among the most impressive feats of printmaking in the early-modern period, with multi-plate, fold-out pages documenting processions and huge crowds, dramatic nighttime scenes, and more.
