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Rhode Island School of Design Museum

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zabelle
zabelle
First Reviewer
5 out of 5
Avg. Member Rating
2
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4
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Impressive Collection

  • May 7, 2009
  • Rated 5 of 5 by SusanPires from Boston, Massachusetts
This museum is confusing, but that's the fun of it. You have to wander a bit and explore to find things. It is many different buildings cobbled together, like the old mansion with its amazing amount of early American furniture, but it's still a great time. They have some beautiful works of Impressionism, donated by Rhode Island's old money families, as well as silver from Gorham, and a giant wooden Buddha, just to name a few!
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Rhode Island School of Design

  • December 21, 2006
  • Rated 5 of 5 by zabelle from Portland, Connecticut
Rhode Island School of Design

Of important note, entrance is free on Sundays from 10am to 1pm. Lucky us we arrived at about 12:30pm. As usual my luck wasn’t all good, all of their Old Masters Paintings were not on display the galleries were closed for a special exhibit that had not begun yet.

This has got to be the most confusing museum I have ever visited. Part of the exhibit is the Pendleton House. It is on two floors and if you want to visit the whole house at one time you will have to visit the exhibits on each of the floors separately. We just did the house first then went back upstairs to start to visit the other galleries.

The building has an elevator. If you take it to the fifth floor that is where the upper floor of the Pendleton House is. Also off of the Pendleton House there is the Radeke Garden which is an interior courtyard. The House has many rooms of period furniture, china and early portraits. It looks as if could be lived in.

From the house we went to the Eastern Art Section. There are several rooms of Chinese Religious Art and a very fierce "Chimera" an imaginary beast who guarded a tomb. There was also a display of Korean ceramics which I have to admit are probably the only Korean ceramics I have ever seen. One exhibit we both liked was the Japanese palanquin which looks like a sedan chair and was used to transport a bride to her wedding.

They have some excellent Indian pieces and I liked the bronze Siva Nataraja doing the dance of bliss. There was a whole room of the art of India and the Himalayas. There is a Japanese Heian period 9 foot Buddha in a room by himself, very impressive.

Another room had an exhibit ‘The Legacy of the Silk Road’ and it highlighted rugs from the Caucasus to central Asia. Many of them are from Uzbekistan and some of the patterns are very reminiscent of Navaho design and color.

We were fascinated by the 5500 year old Egyptian ceramics and the mummy with the paternal genealogy on the sides of his coffin, how handy is that for his descendants

Least you think this is a history museum let me bring up the amazing Impressionist painting that RISD has works by Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Tissot, Degas, Rodin, Pizzaro and Picasso. Not to be outdone there is a Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, William Merrit Chase, Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam and Whistler. It is a very fine collection indeed.

And in the middle of all the wonderful paintings is a Medieval section with a figure of St Peter from the great abbey at Cluny, you can walk through the portals of three medieval churches, one of which is I suspect an ancestral church of my family from Avallon in France.

Don’t miss the gift shop. Allow at least 2 hours.

From journal Providence-America's Renaissance City

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