Stateof-the-Art School

The Rhode Island School of Design

December 9, the Diane Brown Gallery in SoHo unIveils a new exhibition entitled "RISD in New York," featuring works by alumni and faculty of the Rhode Island School of Design. Afterward, at the Greene Street Restaurant, the school will present its annual "Athenas" to influential leaders in art and design. This year's winners are: painter James Rosenquist, art critic Robert Hughes, and Willard C. Butcher, C.E.O. of Chase Manhattan. The exhibition underscores how far RISD has come since it was founded in 1877 by Providence's textilerich Metcalf family to meet the Industrial Revolution's demand for skilled artisans. In the last fifteen years, RISD has blossomed into a trendy finishing school for the young sophisticates and creative souls who get lost in more traditional colleges. In 1986, RISD attracted more than 1,800 students from forty-seven states and fifty

foreign countries at $13,835 a year.

RISD appeals to the eighties generation because it offers a truly liberal arts education. Where else can you get credit for making bikinis out of bagels? Or take such New Wave class trips as whale watching ? New Yorker cartoonist and RISD grad Roz Chast recalls one student "who slept in a coffin," and another "outlandish guy, who wore shoes shaped like bowling balls."

Alums include an eclectic cross section of today's art, film, and fashion scenes: comedian Martin Mull, Ralph Lauren model Clotilde, glass artist Dale Chihuly, film director Martha Coolidge, illustrator David Macaulay, and Talking Heads David Byrne, Chris Frantz, and

Tina Weymouth (known affectionately on campus as the "house band").

One official said Talking Heads "have had a positive impact on the school— RISD is proud of them." Yet David Byme left after his freshman year. Another RISD alum, art dealer Mary Boone, believes "the reputation of an art school should be judged by how many great artists went there," and not by successes in other fields. "I have much more admiration for

Cal-Arts," she adds, "where creative freedom is given full rein." Besides its world-class museum and library, the school's biggest selling point is its proximity to Brown University, a few doors up on College Hill, Industrial designer Ivan Chermayeff (who won the Athena in 1981) suggests, "The presence of Brown sets a tone, even if only through the trees, of scholarly, rather than self-indulgent, behavior." Jewelry designer Kenneth Jay Lane (who went to RISD in the fifties, hoping "to become Alexander Liberman") puts it differently: "Brown students smell better." —Brooks Peters

Brooks Peters