PROVIDENCE.- Visitors to The RISD Museum will experience something they never have before: access to newly created galleries on the third floor of the 1926 Radeke Building. Restored over the past 11 months, this floor, previously closed to the public, will now house a permanent installation from the Museum’s outstanding collection of Twentieth-century art and design, the first gallery devoted to photography, a rotating prints gallery, a new media gallery, a lecture hall, and an education gallery. And of course, new bathrooms.

When the Eliza Radeke Building opened in 1926, two stories were devoted to magnificent art galleries, while the third floor, immediately below street level on the Benefit Street side, was meant for storage and education. The building was designed for growth and it was always believed that the third floor would one day become galleries, and 80 years later, that plan has come to fruition. Over the years, gifts and acquisitions have built a collection numbering 84,000 objects. The demand for classes, public programs, and access to the collections—as well as a growing staff—resulted in crowded working and storage conditions and inadequate gallery space.

Construction of The Chace Center, opening on September 27, 2008, presented the Museum with the opportunity to solve these problems and revitalize an entire floor that previously had been largely closed to the public. The storage areas and departmental offices for Prints, Drawings, and Photographs will move into purpose-built space in The Chace Center. This frees up more than 4,000 square feet that has been restored for use as galleries, classrooms, and a lecture hall. Plans to restore the public floors of the Radeke Building began in earnest two years ago, beginning with the third floor.

A design by Ed Wojcik (RISD BArch ’87) Architects has created public spaces that look as if they were always meant to be there. When The Chace Center opens, these third-floor galleries will become the main floor of the Museum, with visitors entering via the Museum Associates Glass Bridge .

The new Central and South Galleries will display masterworks of painting, sculpture, furniture, ceramics, drawings, photographs, costume, textiles, and industrial design from 1900 to 2000, all drawn from the Museum’s permanent collections. From the work of Henri Matisse and Frank Lloyd Wright to that of Andy Warhol, Lynda Benglis, and designer Ettore Sottsass, the installation entitled Subject to Change: Art and Design of the Twentieth Century conveys the last century’s revolution in art and design, as well as tremendous advances in technology and political equality. The conceptual design for the exhibition, created by Sandra Wheeler and Alfred Zollinger (RISD BArch ’90) of Matter Practice, uses cantilevered forms to highlight the relationship between art and architecture.

While design arts (furniture, ceramics, fashion, textiles) are often shown separately from fine arts (painting, sculpture, drawing, photography), this exhibition weaves them together to explore how artists in all media reacted to world wars; the advent of the automobile, television, and space travel; increased race and gender equality; new materials; and revised notions of what constitutes art itself. Drawn from the RISD Museum’s permanent collection, these objects invite viewers to confront ideas that still seem new—even uncomfortable—and to assess the crosscurrents that made the quest for relevant art and design more personal and inclusive than ever before.

The third floor also houses several smaller galleries devoted to specific genres. The Bill and Nancy Tsiaras Photography Gallery in honor of Aaron Siskind will be inaugurated with a selection of previously unseen photographs by Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and other RISD-associated photographers. The Linda and Vincent Buonanno Works on Paper Gallery opens with an exhibition of masterworks dating from the 1400s through the modern era: From Dürer to Van Gogh: Gifts from Eliza Metcalf Radeke and Helen Metcalf Danforth. The Anne, Michael and Amelia Spalter New Media Gallery dedicates a permanent space for video art and digital installations.

Other new facilities on the third floor include the Murray S. Danforth, Jr. and Helen Metcalf Danforth Lecture Hall, a sophisticated, flexible space with movable seating and state-of-the-art presentation technology. The lecture hall, which can accommodate groups of up to 40, opens onto the Radeke Garden . The Norman and Rosalie Fain Family Education Program Gallery, adjacent to the Central Gallery, allows students, families, and adult learners to work on projects in view of the masterpieces displayed and to access more information about the art on view. Much-needed public restrooms are located near the elevator.

The construction phase of the third-floor restoration project began in July 2007 and was ably managed by Shawmut Design and Construction, a firm with significant expertise in construction for museums. The third-floor restoration will be followed by work on the two levels above beginning in 2009, to be completed the spring of 2011.

The RISD Museum has commissioned a new work that will cover three walls of the Norman and Rosalie Fain Family Education Program Gallery: Exine by British artist Paul Morrison. Morrison’s bold black-and-white wall paintings often depict botanical themes; the exine is the outer layer of the wall of a pollen grain. This breathtaking composition features dramatic shifts in scale, with outsized plant life juxtaposed with a distant landscape view. Morrison’s work, steeped in a variety of historical sources yet utterly contemporary, has been presented at Harvard University ’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, The Drawing Center ( New York ), ICA ( London ), and other art institutions. This purchase was supported by the Richard Brown Baker Fund for Contemporary British Art.