PROVIDENCE, RI.- In 2027, Rhode Island School of Design and the RISD Museum will celebrate 150 years in Providence. From the beginning, the museum has been an integral part of RISD’s educational mission, providing students with direct access to works of art and design and creating a resource for teaching, learning, research, and creative discovery. Over the past century and a half, both the college and museum have evolved, along with the communities, artists, educators, and ideas that have shaped them.

As part of RISD’s 150th anniversary celebration, the RISD Museum will mark this shared milestone through a yearlong program of exhibitions, publications, scholarship, artist projects, and gatherings that explore the museum’s particular history and its continuing role within RISD, Providence, and the broader arts community. Together, these projects reflect on 150 years of collecting, teaching, and making while looking toward the museum’s future.

“The histories of RISD and the RISD Museum have always been deeply intertwined,” says Tsugumi Maki, director of the RISD Museum. “The museum was founded as part of RISD’s educational mission, and for 150 years, the collection has been a resource for all in the community. This anniversary gives us an opportunity to reflect on that shared history while also asking what role the museum can play in RISD’s future.”

In the Making: 150 Years of Collecting at the RISD Museum

At the heart of the museum’s anniversary programming is In the Making: 150 Years of Collecting at the RISD Museum, on view November 21, 2026, through August 1, 2027. Bringing together 51 works from across the collection, the exhibition explores how and why objects entered the museum and how the collection and collecting strategy has evolved alongside RISD’s teaching mission, the changing field of museums, and the communities the college and museum serve.

Organized chronologically by accession date, In the Making traces the growth and changing character of the museum’s collection. The exhibition considers the different ways works have entered the collection, from gifts and bequests to strategic acquisitions, and examines the relationships among collecting, teaching, artistic practice, and community.

The exhibition begins with some of the museum’s earliest acquisitions. An 1889 painting by Winslow Homer, acquired in 1894, provides one example of the museum’s longstanding engagement with contemporary art of the time. Recent acquisitions by artists including local artists Roberth Dilworth, Jonathan James-Perry, John Prip, and Robin Spears Jr., as well as Noir Kei Ninomiya and Mickalene Thomas demonstrate how that engagement continues today.

Three themes organize the exhibition: Materials, Processes, and Techniques; Community; and Breadth and Diversity. Together, they reveal the many purposes the collection has served and the people and relationships that have shaped it.

Objects acquired as teaching resources demonstrate the close connection between the museum and RISD’s educational mission. Early Japanese design albums, for example, supported students’ study of materials and techniques while connecting the college to Providence’s textile and jewelry industries. Works associated with the Providence Lithograph Company and Gorham Manufacturing Company similarly reflect relationships among the museum, the school, local industry, and the broader community.

The collection also reflects changing understandings of artistic importance and representation. Works by Vincent van Gogh, Franz Marc, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Jacob Lawrence, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Georgia O’Keeffe, Sam Gilliam, and Leon Polk Smith sit alongside works by artists whose practices and perspectives have expanded the scope of the collection. The exhibition also considers the complexities of collecting and displaying Indigenous works and the museum’s continuing efforts to broaden representation across its collections.

“The collection tells a story that goes far beyond the objects themselves,” says Emily Banas, exhibition curator and the museum’s associate curator of decorative arts and design. “It reflects the students who studied them, the artists and industries connected to the school and museum, the donors who helped build the collection, and the curators and educators who have shaped how it is understood. The collection is never finished. It is always in the making.”

Among the collection’s significant milestones is the bequest of more than 1,100 objects from Charles L. Pendleton, which led to the creation of Pendleton House, the nation’s first museum building dedicated to American decorative arts. Such moments illustrate how individual donors, artists, faculty, students, museum leaders, and communities have influenced the direction of the collection over time.

By placing works acquired across 150 years in conversation, In the Making asks how a collection changes as ideas about art, design, education, and community change. It also considers what it means to steward a collection for future generations.

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

In the Making is one part of a broader program of anniversary projects that considers the RISD Museum’s history, its relationship to RISD, and its evolving role as a museum and educational resource.

A new publication, 150 Works, celebrates 150 years of RISD history through 150 selections from across the museum’s collection. Featuring new photography and a playful design with a poster dust jacket, this compact volume brings works by RISD-affiliated makers into conversation with thousands of years of artmaking from around the world. Available now at the museum and the RISD Store, the publication features an introduction by Tsugumi Maki, with graphic design by Brendan Campbell and photography by Erik Gould.

A digital publication, The First 150 Years of the RISD Museum, launching in March 2027, will offer a deeper exploration of the museum’s history and future. Bringing together scholarship, archival material, a multimedia timeline, audio, and personal reflections, the publication will examine the museum’s origins within the history of American museums and higher education, its changing approaches to education and collecting, and its responses to social and political change. It will also consider the museum’s future and the role it can play in RISD’s next 150 years.

Also in March 2027, the museum will present Critical Encounters: Teaching Collections Handled with Care, a symposium focused on RISD’s teaching collections and the role that collections play in education, research, and creative practice. Additional anniversary projects, artist collaborations, gatherings, and programs will invite students, faculty, staff, alumni, artists, donors, members, and communities in Providence and beyond to participate in the anniversary throughout the 2026–27 academic year.

Together, these efforts offer an opportunity to consider not only what the RISD Museum has collected over 150 years, but what it has made possible: encounters among objects and ideas, artists and students, the college and its communities, and Providence and the wider world.