Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design

Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design Review

This superb museum is a multilevel complex housing paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, textiles, and decorative arts—80,000 works are in frequent rotation. The five-story Chace Center, a 43,000-square-foot expansion, connects to the original 1926 museum building via a glass bridge and features more exhibit space, a new auditorium, and additional studios and classrooms. The museum's permanent holdings include the Aldrich collection of Japanese prints, Gorham silver, American furniture, Latin American art, and French Impressionist paintings including works by Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Also here are galleries filled with Greco-Roman, Egyptian, Asian, and Islamic art, as well as European and American art from the Middle Ages through the 20th century. The Egyptian mummy, which dates from 300 BC, is popular with children. Admission includes the adjoining Pendleton House, a replica of an early-19th-century Providence house.