The New Negro and the Dawn of the Harlem Renaissance
In 1925, an anthology of Black creative work heralded the arrival of a movement that had been years in the making.
Is This a Gay House?
The British aristocrat Horace Walpole's villa Strawberry Hill was said to be evidence of his "degeneracy."
The Forgotten Radicalism of Black Light Posters
Fluorescents have fascinated artists for millennia, but the 1960s and '70s saw a generation of revolutionaries experiment with black light.
Nine Black Cat Stickers
They crossed our path and we lived to tell the tale. Check them out in the Street Arts Graphics Collection!
The Paintings That Tried (and Failed) to Codify Race
Casta paintings of the eighteenth century tried to show who was who in New Spain. But reality was much more complicated.
Polish Posters in the RISD Library Collection
Posters are part of a tradition of object-based learning at the Rhode Island School of Design.
How the Artists Union Shook Up the New Deal
When artists showed solidarity with one another and the larger labor movement, they won federal patronage.
The Wellcome Collection—Perfect Medicine for the Incurably Curious
Pharmacy genius, Henry Solomon Wellcome amassed a lot of knowledge—and amazing tchotchkes too.
How Black Artists Fought Exclusion in Museums
When the Metropolitan Museum of Art excluded artworks from a major exhibition all about Harlem, Black artists protested the erasure.