Art finds appreciation even - and perhaps especially - in economic crisis.
This became obvious last Saturday when thousands of people came to celebrate the grand opening of the Chace Center, a $34 million, five-story museum at the Rhode Island School of Design that gives an art collection a place to shine.
From 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., the center pulsed with activity - cocktails, music and special exhibits. Hurricane Kyle did not deter crowds, and at closing time, the visitor count was 7,500, according to museum security.
The Chace Center, on 20 North Main St., serves as an entry point to RISD. It is the product of the largest fundraising effort in the school's history, which began nearly a decade ago. The center was designed by award-winning architect Jose Rafael Moneo, who joined the project in 2001.
"Now we have a space for world class, contemporary shows" said RISD Museum Director Hope Alswang Saturday night. "Everyone is engaged by the magic and fantasy of the (glassworks) show" currently on display.
The Center is a museum, student gallery space and learning center connected to the old RISD Radeke Museum by a glass bridge.
The Center is LEED certified by the U.S. Green Building Council, recognized for its "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design" for its careful disposal of waste during construction and energy-efficient control systems. A fourth floor shower is for bike-riding employees.
The first floor has a cafe, risd/works gift shop and auditorium. The second floor is devoted to a student media and exhibitions gallery. The third floor will have large contemporary art shows. The collection's 26,000 works on paper - prints, photographs and drawings - are on the fourth floor. The fifth is studio space.
Twice a year students are invited to submit exhibition proposals to the jury overseeing curation of the second floor galleries. Martin Smich, a RISD masters student and a teaching assistant for Painting I and II at Brown, co-curated the first student exhibition, a mixed-media show entitled "A Varied Terrain."
"The work shows where human constructions and nature converge," Smich said.
Declan Van Welie, a senior illustration major at RISD and member of its Student Alliance Board, said that students have enough space in the museum.
Van Welie said being accepted for admission at the Center was extremely difficult and that it could take up to four years to show a piece in the new student gallery, if one was lucky. He stressed the profound need for more student exhibition and studio space.
"RISD also needs a gallery to represent and sell undergraduate student work in different mediums. That would be successful. I don't know why nobody has caught onto that," Van Welie said. The risd/works gift shop sells almost exclusively alumni and faculty work.
A major glass show by RISD alum Dale Chihuly is the inaugural exhibition at the Center and took two weeks to assemble. At the opening, timed entry tickets controlled the crowd. The first installation, "Persian Sky," is a riot of color - overlapping glass bowls and trippy flowers, suspended near the ceiling and lit from within. In another installation, purple spears rise from birch logs, crossed camp-fire like on the floor.
"I'm not usually into contemporary art," said Brown student Caitlin Howitt '09, who studies archeology and attended the exhibit. "But even little kids like Chihuly; his work is so colorful."
Chihuly helped establish the glass major at RISD and taught in the program on and off until the 1980s. A group show of works by nine of his former students called "Under the Influence," currently on display at the RISD museum, complements his show.
RISD capped off the opening of its center by sponsoring in part a Waterfire lighting that evening.
The museum is closed on Mondays, and RISD, Brown and Roger Williams University students have free entry with student IDs.
Museum member Doree Goodman Warren, who attended the opening, called the project "important" and "necessary." Art is a good inter-generational bridge, she said, citing the wide range of age groups at the event.
"It's about sharing art," she said.
