What’s in Your Icebox?

Rhode Island School of Design commemorates major Warhol exhibit

When Andy Warhol visited the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1969 to curate an exhibit, the prince of pop art was not well-received.

It was the era of student protests and Warhol, at least at that time, was considered by many students as more socialite than iconoclast or rebel. They “looked at him as out of touch. He was a notorious, very prominent public figure as an artist,” says Dominic Molon, Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art. There was resistance to the elitism that students perceived Warhol and Danny Robbins, the museum’s director at the time, represented.

Artist, filmmaker, gay icon and superstar, Warhol was given free rein to curate a show from the museum’s entire collection, pulling objects from storage to exhibit whatever captured his imagination. The “Raid the Icebox” concept, which broke down the barriers between artist, curator and museum, was radical at the time, says Molon. The exhibit may have been novel, but Warhol’s time in Providence was fraught with problems. “He made several visits here with an entourage but he left early,” says Molon.

Today, the “Raid the Icebox” concept is fairly common among art museums, and the relationship between artists and institutions has evolved dramatically to a more collaborative one. But RISD wanted to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of “Raid the Icebox I with Andy Warhol” at the RISD Museum. What better way than a sequel that showcases acclaimed contemporary artists and celebrates RISD’s collection?

“We are honoring that historical moment from 50 years ago and [asking] ‘what does it now mean for an artist as curator to engage the collection or institution in some way?’” Molon says.

“Raid the Icebox” pays homage to the 50th anniversary of Warhol’s show but it is very much of the zeitgeist. RISD invited contemporary artists and designers Pablo Bronstein, Nicole Eisenman, Pablo Helguera, Beth Katleman, Simone Leigh, Sebastian Ruth, Paul Scott and the art magazine Triple Canopy to create new bodies of work or create a unique curatorial project using the museum’s collection, which includes more than 100,000 works spanning ancient times to the present. The exhibitions, with staggered openings through

the fall and early winter, will run to summer 2020.

As curator of contemporary art, Molon worked closely with two of the invited artists, Simone Leigh and Nicole Eisenman. He was exhilarated by “grafting the artistic process onto a curatorial one, particularly with two artists whose careers are [thriving]. Both are getting invited now to major exhibitions and they both pushed themselves” with this ambitious exhibition, he says.

Eisenman earned her BFA from RISD in 1987 and lives and works in New York. Her work in painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture adapts traditional art-historical techniques to often satirical depictions of contemporary society. Eisenman is committed to representing the complex implications of the body as a site of desire and identity and to addressing issues of gender and sexuality.

Her “Raid the Icebox” project is provocatively titled, “Tonight we are going out and we are all getting hammered.” The exhibit begins with a bold image: Molon cites Eisenman’s juxtaposition of a statue of Jesus next to a fictional gay discotheque called Kiki’s Backdoor. Ranging from medieval to contemporary, the objects in the show are arranged to draw attention to their humanity. Party lights rake across the canvases, casting strips of blue, red, and green across the faces that line the walls of the “club” while out back behind the dumpster, sculptures wait in line to be let in.

For “Raid the Icebox,” Simone Leigh’s “The Chorus” reflects her frequent examinations of black women throughout history. Leigh’s work across many disciplines, including sculpture, installation and film addresses the agency of black women. A sound installation, a multiplicity of voices that alludes to the chorus found in ancient Greek drama, plays in each gallery of the exhibition. In the gallery, artists, writers, curators and historians read texts written by women of color: Saidiya Hartman’s essay “Manual for General Housework” (2019), sculptor Nancy Elizabeth Prophet’s diaries from her time in Paris (1922–1934), and new text created for this project by historian Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts. Leigh’s sound work in this installation includes mature, racially charged language that directly conveys the intense personal experiences of the women who wrote it.

A Chicago native now based in Brooklyn, Leigh won the 2018 Hugo Boss Award, a prize that recognizes achievement in contemporary art. She then had a prestigious solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum. Her sculptures often use materials and forms that are traditionally associated with African art as she confronts and examines ideas of the female body, race, beauty and community.

Molon describes working with Leigh and Eisenman on “Raid the Icebox” as “an inspiring shot in the arm” that allowed him to see the collection in a different way.

“I’d been looking past items that had been on storage racks for years. The artists challenged me because the approach was modern, not historical,” he says. “The idea was to think of things differently; to let go of certain conventions working with living artists with their own styles and sensibilities.” [x] risdmuseum.org

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