Raid the Icebox
Raid the Icebox Sebastian Ruth
RISD Museum Sep.13.2019
Design Assistant
https://risdmuseum.org/exhibitions-events/exhibitions/raid-icebox-now-sebastian-ruth
Much of my work questions how to integrate musical experiences and the life of a community for mutual benefit. I’ve been inspired by educator John Dewey’s project in the 1930s to find ways of “restoring continuity” between art and everyday life experience. Dewey worried that the formality of art spaces prevented people from seeing art as lively, meaning-rich encounters connected to a sense of purpose as humans in the world. Philosopher Maxine Greene took this a step further and said we can and must “lend works of art” our lives—we must allow ourselves to see art as speaking to our core questions, not in an abstract or cerebral way, but in a way that connects to our memories, our pasts, our lived lives.
Witnessing considers how museum galleries can be places to see the everyday as art and art as belonging to the everyday. Smokestacks and factory scenes, a cluster of chairs, trees next to water—how are these possibilities for stopping and seeing differently?
Sebastian Ruth is a musician, educator, and organizer whose work has been in reimagining careers for musicians at the intersection of performance, teaching, and deep community collaboration. Through the work of Community MusicWorks, the organization he founded in 1997, Sebastian and his colleagues have continually experimented with the forms and traditions of music making.
Raid the Icebox Nicole Eisenman
RISD Museum Sep.13.2019
Design Assistant
https://risdmuseum.org/exhibitions-events/exhibitions/raid-icebox-now-nicole-eisenman
Inside Kiki’s Backdoor, works from the RISD Museum’s collection, ranging from medieval to contemporary, are arranged to draw attention to their humanity. These bold creatures stare at us with frank gazes: we cruise them and they cruise us. Party lights rake across the canvases, casting strips of blue, red, and green across the faces that line the walls of the club, bringing them all into the present moment with us. Out back behind the dumpster, sculptures wait in line to be let in.
This installation plucks these works from the chronology of art history and gives them space to step forward and claim their seats in sonder with us, helping us to realize that each one has a life as vivid and complex as our own.
Nicole Eisenman lives and works in New York and received her BFA from RISD in 1987. Her work in painting, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture adapts traditional art-historical techniques and approaches to an often satirical depiction of contemporary society and its discontents. Eisenman’s practice is also defined by a commitment to representing the complex implications of the body as a site of desire and identity and to addressing issues of gender and sexuality.
Raid the Icebox Pablo Helguera
RISD Museum Feb.07.2020 Design Assistant
https://risdmuseum.org/exhibitions-events/exhibitions/raid-icebox-now-pablo-helguera
Inventarios/Inventories explores the personal and domestic contexts of artworks, particularly as they exist in artists’ personal lives and working environments and the homes of their close family and collaborators. Drawing upon the RISD Museum’s Nancy Sayles Day Collection of Latin American art, Pablo Helguera has collaborated with living Latin American artists and the families, close friends, and collaborators of those no longer alive to provide a view of the domestic lives of artworks. The project is also a tribute to the exhibition history of the RISD Museum and the legacy of former director Alexander Dorner, who created immersive environments to enhance the visitor’s experience. The exhibition is accompanied by public programs and performances developed in collaboration with the participating artists.
Pablo Helguera is a Mexican artist who lives and works in New York. His projects span installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, socially engaged art, and performance, drawing inspiration from topics ranging from history, pedagogy, and sociology. His work often takes on unusual forms of presentation, which have included road trips, phonographic recordings, musical performances, and books.