1

S. Hollis Mickey
Prof. Steven Lubar
AMCV2220: Museums in their Communities
April 6, 2011

Catalogue Review: The Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art Selected Works

Museum collection catalogues, often filled with color images and extensive text, try to

concisely capture the breadth and depth of a museum’s collection. Collection catalogues serve

like a guidebook—highlighting the most significant and memorable objects, and omitting the

mundane and second-rate. In a way, they rationalize collections—which are often eclectic

amalgamations of thousands if not millions of objects—into comprehensible, digestible book

format. Even so, these catalogues tend to reveal something of a museums collection’s strengths

and something of an institution’s mission and policy. The Rhode Island School of Design

Museum of Art Selected Works catalogue offers a useful case study.

The catalogue begins with a short history of the RISD Museum and its collection. The

history explains that when the museum opened in 1878 a museum in conjunction with the

founding of the Rhode Island School of Design, it was a product of increasing industrialization

and a national interest in promoting America as a design capital. This historical section

subsequently enumerates significant periods of collecting and large gifts and bequeaths. Such

history offers several insights. First, it helps to show that how and what the museum collected

was generated by social and historical context. Aesthetic trends, economic downturn, wartime all

greatly influenced acquisitions. This is illuminating in light of most museum collection policy,

which seems to situate how and what a museum collects upon enduring ideals. Collection

policies rarely, if ever, make reference to the influence of social, political, or economic factors.

Second, it suggests that the Museum’s collection was driven by the taste of individuals—most

particularly directors and donors. Curators are rarely mentioned by name. Often, museum
 2

collection policies frame curators as the primary overseer of acquisition. While it is true that

curators do usually have much decision-making power, this history points to the fact that

curators do not necessarily drive the shaping of collections. To put it quite bluntly, this history

suggests that it is the individuals with power and money in the museum that ultimately effect

collections development. Such summations may sound like harsh debasements, but they are not

intended to be. On the contrary, it seems quite honorable to reveal the messy reality of how this

collection has come into being rather than to idealize its constitution as wholly based on values

and mission. Indeed, what the short history of this catalogue reveals is true at most museums and

arts institutions with collections.

Following this concise history is a selection of 375 objects from the over 84,000 held by

the Museum. The catalogue places the objects into rather traditional categories. Until 1900,

objects are categorized by region: Egypt and Africa, Asia, Ancient Greece and Rome, Europe,

The Americas. After 1900, all objects are lumped together in the “Art after 1900” category. This

grouping of objects follows the gallery set-up at the Museum, which exhibits objects much in the

same way. As in the museum, within each of these categories are objects across a range of times

and mediums. Unlike the Museum, however, which displays objects from various mediums side-

by-side in rather loose temporal groupings, the catalogue tends to group mediums together in

strict chronological order. In this way, the catalogue is designed like an art historical text which

narrativizes a linear progression through places and objects. However, it seems to me that the

book format allows for groupings not possible in the museum and the potential for creating new

networks of meaning across objects.

That being said, the catalogue is still an ample guide to important pieces in the collection.

Every object represented in the guide is presented with a large color photograph and a paragraph
 3

which describes its significant features and presents other noteworthy information such as

information about the artist or stories of the figures represented. These descriptions are largely

for the initiated; they adopt art historical jargon and do not define terms like ‘modernism.’ This

says something about the target audience for this catalogue. With a $40 price tag, it is not a

minor investment. This catalogue seems to be geared towards those with an ongoing relationship

with or investment in the Museum. It is not designed for families or for one-time visitors who

might be what educators call ‘beginning lookers’—those with little to no knowledge of art. Even

so, for those with some art historical background and some interest in the Museum it does offer a

sense of the Museum’s holdings in a scholarly way that could not be gleaned from a regular visit.

From examining the breath of the objects in the catalogue, one begins to realize how

eclectic the RISD collection truly is: ritual hoods to Gorham silver to Impressionist still life.

Seeing the breadth in these selected works it makes one wonder what has been omitted—what

kind of lower and middling quality objects are not part of this review of the highlights? What

kind of objects are these less interesting or significant items? What would a full review of the

collections reveal? Where are the true strengths and weaknesses of the collection? The catalogue

does not attempt to draw the varied objects it presents on glossy pages together under one

framework of ideas or thesis. The way in which the catalogue is designed seems to suggest that

the objects are standards of art and design along a historical timeline. The catalogue does not

suggest how the objects might interrelate beyond the placement of objects in the categories

described above or how the objects might be useful or provocative in the Museum context.

Interestingly, the values and mission of the RISD Museum of Art are blatantly absent

from this catalogue. This is perhaps, an unfortunate omission. While it is perhaps honorable to

admit that the collection has been influenced by other factors, it still seems prudent to situate
 4

how the Museum aims to use the objects it has acquired. The RISD Museum certainly does have

a strong mission: to serve the community of emerging designers from RISD and to inspire the

surrounding New England audience. Articulating this mission either in conclusion or

introduction to this catalogues might help to add cohesion, even if retrospectively, to the

Museum’s collection.

Elegantly produced, with a hefty price and weight, the RISD Selected Works catalogue is

more of a coffee-table book than a comprehensive collection guide. This is indeed the case with

most Museum collection catalogues designed for patrons to purchase. Aside from being an

attractive document, the catalogue is very strong in two ways: first, it quite honestly frames the

eclectic manner its present collection was amassed over the past century and a half; second,

through its many large photos it visually represents the diversity across a variety of mediums of

RISD’s collection. The strengths of the catalogues, however, open up three key questions:

-What is the real makeup of the collection beyond the highlights?

-How do the objects held by the RISD Museum fit in with a cohesive execution of the
institutions mission and values?
-How might the Museum’s current collection be strengthened? In what ways does it plan
and need to grow?

A museum collection catalogue should not be held responsible for summarizing the

details of a museum’s collection policy. However, it does offer the unique opportunity for an

institution to think through its collection. The book format provides the chance for the Museum

to present an array of objects acquired for various reasons over time as part of its current mission

and as relevant to the community of which it is a part.

While the collection catalogue book offers much potential, it does seem, however that it

is the online collection that offers a truly unique platform for the museum to communicate its

holdings to a public. The online collection allows for the entire collection to be visible. Since an
 5

online visitor is not likely to look at all of a museum’s collection, the online collection

catalogue’s real value is not in its totality but in its flexibility. An online collections catalogue

ongoing virtual curation and the dissemination of networks of information which link objects in

unusual and unexpected ways. This facilitates the possibility for constantly re-imagining and re-

invigorating a collection without the pressure of publishers deadlines or the expense of printing

fees. Furthermore, and most importantly, the online collection allows for interactivity and

engagement. While the produced and attractive collection’s catalogue might have a prominent

spot next to the ottoman, it is not a book that most would consult regularly. The interactive

element of the online catalogue allows readers, or visitors if you will, to have a sense of

connection and ownership to in a way that encourages not only returning to the website but

visiting the museum itself to see the real thing.

In conclusion, it seems that the book collection catalogue may be a thing of the past,

perhaps another object for the museum to add to its archive. In the new realm of the digital who

knows what the exhibition catalogue will become and how it might help novice lookers,

entrenched art lovers and academics, and museum professionals alike connect over objects.

The Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art Selected Works. Providence, 2008.