The RISD Museum houses over 80,000 works of art, ranging from ancient Greek and Roman sculpture to French Impressionist paintings, from Chinese stone and terracotta sculpture to contemporary art in every medium, including textiles, ceramics, glass and furniture. It also serves the general public with a full schedule of special exhibitions, lectures, tours, concerts and other programs. The Museum’s collection is displayed in 45 galleries on three floors, tracing the history of art from antiquity to the 21st century.

Galleries housing Greek vases and coins, Roman frescoes and sculpture, and Etruscan bronzes lead to the Medieval gallery, which includes a 12th-century sculpture from the Third Abbey Church of Cluny, France. A sequence of European galleries follows, with painting, sculpture, and decorative arts ranging from the Renaissance to Neoclassicism.

Highlights of the 19th-century French painting galleries include masterpieces by Delacroix, Corot, Manet, Monet, Cézanne, Rodin and Matisse. American painting of the 19th and early 20th centuries is represented in work by Chase, Heade, Homer, Bellows, Sargent and Cassatt.

Pendleton House, which opened in 1906, is the earliest example of an “American wing” in any museum. It features an extraordinary collection of 18th- and early 19th-century decorative arts and one of the finest American furniture collections in the country, including examples from the Townsend and Goddard circle of colonial Newport craftsmen. Paintings by American masters such as Copley, Stuart, Cole, and Sully also hang in Pendleton House.

The Museum’s Egyptian galleries feature the coffin and mummy of the priest Nesmin, burial objects, and a first-class collection of faience. Additional galleries highlight the artistic achievements of Africa, Central and South America, India, and China. The nine-foot Buddha Dainichi Nyorai, from a medieval temple west of Kyoto, occupies his own gallery, while extensive collections of Asian textiles and Japanese prints are exhibited in galleries dedicated to their display.

Selections from the more than 18,000 prints, drawings and photographs and the 15,000 costume and textiles are frequently featured in special exhibitions. The Daphne Farago Wing, dedicated in 1994, displays contemporary art in all media, either from the Museum’s permanent collection or from special traveling exhibitions.