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Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design Review

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Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design

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Fodor's 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. A 43,000-square-foot expansion is slated for completion in September 2008—the five-story Chace Center, which will be connected to the original 1926 museum building via a glass bridge, will add 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 Monet, Manet, Degas, and 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. Keep an eye out for purposeful juxtapositioning: a 19th-century bronze bust of an African woman is displayed in a gallery dominated by a formal family portrait of the Napoleonic era; a machine-age painting of flowers flanks a window to the museum's garden courtyard; an early Gauguin landscape hangs beside a Pissarro painted at the same site. Since this is a university museum, exhibits may include demonstration videos, or unfinished works by masters such as Cassatt and Cézanne. The Egyptian mummy, which dates from 300 BC, is popular with children. The latest addition to the permanent collection is a new exhibit on RISD alum and famed glassblower Dale Chihuly. Admission includes the adjoining Pendleton House, a replica of an early-19th-century Providence house.

  • Cost: $8, free Sun. 10-1 and Fri. noon-1:30
  • Open: Tues.-Sun. 10-5
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Member Reviews and Ratings

Reviewed by bachslunch from US on 5/13/09
Arguably the best attraction in Providence, a first-rate medium sized art museum with a wide-ranging collection. Has a very high quality to quantity ratio, including some anthology-level items. Surprisingly diverse holdings, with paintings and sculpture from many eras and countries, including a respectable non-Western collection. A must.

Member Rating: 5.0
Ratings details: Experience: 5.0 Ease: 5.0 Value: 5.0 Don't Miss: 5.0
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