While driving up Waterman Street with friends on the night of Sept. 13, Hillary Leewong '06 was the first to notice that her art installation was missing from its site outside the List Art Center.
"It isn't a well-lit area, but I didn't see it at all," said Leewong. "As we drove closer I started saying 'It's not there!' and we saw that it was completely gone."
She later discovered that the Rhode Island School of Design's custodial staff had destroyed the installation, thinking it was part of an outdated project because of a lack of communication between RISD and Brown's Department of Visual Art.
Leewong's piece was part of "in TRANSIT: from OBJECT to SITE," an installation art show running through Oct. 22 at the List Art Center. Until Sept. 13, "Pasa," made mostly of chicken wire and soda pop labels, resided on the patch of grass directly north of List, alongside a Rhode Island School of Design faculty parking lot.
Leewong was quick to highlight the conceptual significance behind "Pasa's" destruction. She explained that her piece was about blurred borders in communities, thereby making the "ambiguous way" in which it was destroyed particularly striking.
After filing a report with the Department of Public Safety, Leewong contacted Associate Professor Emerita of Visual Art Marlene Malik, who had invited her to participate in the exhibition. A concerned Malik then phoned fellow "in TRANSIT" organizers Vesela Sretenovic, curator of the Bell Gallery, and Associate Professor of Visual Art Leslie Bostrom, neither of whom could offer an explanation.
The following morning, Bostrom contacted administrators at RISD and discovered that the school's custodial staff had dismantled the piece. They had mistaken it for one of the outdoor sculptures RISD students assembled during an orientation activity.
According to John Rodrigues, lead groundskeeper at RISD, members of the student government wanted to engage freshmen RISD students by having them make "found object sculptures" using "stuff from out of dumpsters and around campus." These projects were put up on Sept. 10, the day after "in TRANSIT" officially opened. RISD custodial staff were given instructions to tear down the orientation sculptures on Sept. 11 and Sept. 12.
"Not having any information, we assumed ("Pasa") was part of the project," Rodrigues said. He added that "Pasa" did not have a sign to distinguish it as a Brown piece and was located on RISD property. Though she now agrees with Rodrigues, Bostrom said she was initially unaware that "Pasa" rested on RISD grounds.
"I don't want to point fingers, but this seems like something that should have been avoided," said Leewong, who began building the piece in late July after months of planning. "People seemed really excited and interested in it, but only a few of them got to see it."
"In the future, I would call RISD ahead of time," said Bostrom, addressing the lack of communication between the two schools. Bostrom said she believes this is the first time RISD custodial staff have dismantled a Brown student's project.
According to Bostrom, RISD officials were "very upset" about the situation. The officials encouraged Leewong to rebuild her piece on the site, and Brown's visual art department offered to pay for replacement materials. However, rather than remake "Pasa" from scratch, Leewong opted to set up photographs of the piece near its original site.
