The Museum of Art is an integral part of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), an internationally recognized college of art and design.
Located in Providence, the Museum of Art, RISD is among the country's finest museums of its size. With over
100,000 works of art in its permanent collection, the museum showcases an array of ever-changing exhibitions which encompass all major areas and periods of world culture.
The museum has particular strengths in ancient Etruscan, Greek and Roman
sculpture, frescoes, metalwork, vases, and jewelry; Old master, French, and British drawings and prints; Japanese prints in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Collection; costume and textiles, with a very important Asian collection donated in large part by
Lucy Truman Aldrich; American fine and decorative art; French 19th-century art; and contemporary fine crafts.
The museum's Pendleton House, the first American wing anywhere, features an extraordinary collection of 18th-century American furniture and decorative arts in period rooms. A more recent addition, The Daphne Farago Wing (1993), provides dynamic gallery
space for the display and interpretation of contemporary art in all media. Favorites with young visitors are the Ptolemaic Egyptian mummy and case and a nine-foot wooden Buddha from a 12th-century Japanese temple, as well as Native American and other
Ethnographic artifacts. The Museum Shop offers unique art-related gifts from around the world.
Highlights:
The Museum's permanent collections encompass all major areas and periods of world culture, with particular strengths in ancient Etruscan, Greek, and Roman sculpture, frescoes, metalwork, vases, and jewelry; Old Master, French, and British drawings and
prints; British watercolors; nineteenth-century French painting and sculpture; Cubist and modern art, including the Albert Pilavin Collection of Twentieth-Century American Art and the Nancy Sayles Day Collection of Modern Latin American Art; American
furniture and decorative arts, including the aforementioned Charles Pendleton Collection and the Gorham Silver Collection; Japanese prints in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Collection; costume and textiles, with a very important Asian collection donated in
large part by Lucy Truman Aldrich; and contemporary fine crafts.
Favorites with young visitors are a Ptolemaic Egyptian mummy and case and a nine-foot wooden Buddha from a twelfth-century Japanese temple, as well as Native American and other ethnographic artifacts. The Aaron Siskind Center is a study area for the
Museum's collection of photographs.