Rhode Island School of Design - Portfolio Yearbook (Providence, RI)

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MUSEUM Tue Museum oF Art is one of the oldest divi- sions of Rhode Island School of Design, and its origins go back to the earliest years of the institu- tion. Through the years, with the help of devoted friends and staff, it has developed as a working collection of choice examples of the world’s art arranged to present a cross-section and a chrono- logical sequence of the history of civilization. This aspect of the collections, however, is em- phatically not to be thought of as its principal phase, for no one ever goes to a museum primarily to learn about history or the story of civilization as such. The reason one goes to a museum—the National Gallery, London, the Louvre, or such a smaller place as Fenway Court, Boston, all come to mind—is to see superlatively beautiful works of art, no more, no less. And this is exactly the reason why anyone would visit our Museum—to see such treasures as the head of Ptolemy VI, the Romanesque ivory, the Tintoretto, the Houdon, the Oudry, or our nineteenth century pictures. It is the matter of becoming familiar with the best and then renewing the familiarity time and again which makes for the impact of a work of art. Many years ago Earle Row, the distin- guished first Director of this Museum, wrote of the French painter—Millais, I think it was— who said, ‘I know my Louvre! and Mr. Rowe made the plea that each of us in the region can and ought to take the same pride and sense of personal identification in our Museum. A museum has, naturally, three functions: to acquire, to preserve, and to publish. In the broadest sense these mean to garner together the finest and loveliest of the world’s visual treasure regardless of historic significance, to put these works into the best of possible condition and to show them as gracefully as possible, and to make them known to all who may be interested (and, if possible, to those who may not care, too) through the various means at the Museum’s dis- posal. The Museum has now for some years through the Museum Committee, that group of disinterested people who are charged with a gen- eral superintendance of the Museum, devoted friends, and the staff, been at work to improve its holdings by buying or accepting only those objects of the highest quality and refusing to buy or accept something merely because it fills a gap. The installations are constantly in a state of re- finement so that one may now find the Museum an exceedingly pleasant place in which to be. And the Museum, through its Museum Notes, which constitute three issues annually of the Bulletin of Rhode Island School of Design, as well as the independent publications of its staff, and through its other activities in the way of public relations, is making its treasures known. DR. JOHN MAXON Director of RIS.D. Museum

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FRESHMAN FOUNDATION “O This Learning, What a Thing it is!” The Taming of the Shrew “O, this learning what a thing it is!” How hard it is and with what toil, amid the shattered castles of our old beliefs, we come to know the complex alphabet of a new articulateness, to find there is great virtue in simplicity, to see what we had not seen be- fore— a strange arithmetic of line, the line of form, the form of space and the all pervading color of our environment— to be aware, yet not to know; to wonder, yet no answers to find; to feel the rankling shock of self responsibility without the soft security of precise judgment and reward for what we thought was meant for us to do; when what was meant was only that we should come to know that Learning is but a portion of ourselves and will be, to some degree, forever with us, if we but learn to see. SAMUEL F. HERSHEY Chairman, Freshman Foundation I]