Crystal Williams describes herself as a “faculty activist,” so it’s no surprise that Williams envisions the start of her tenure at the Rhode Island School of Design as a continuation of a commitment to using the arts as a springboard to inclusion and equity.
Before her appointment last January as RISD’s 18th president, Williams, 52, served as Boston University’s vice president and associate provost for community and inclusion.
Raised in Detroit and Madrid, Spain, she began her teaching career in 2000 at Reed College and was later appointed the inaugural dean for institutional diversity, moving in 2013 to Bates College, where she was the college’s first associate vice president for strategic initiatives.
Now leading a prestigious arts school in Providence, Williams acknowledges she can’t draw well, or even doodle. Her art takes the form of words. A poet and essayist, she has published four collections and worked as a theater actress early on.
Nevertheless, Williams says arts in higher education is an assembly of different forms with similar goals: to provide not only outlets for individual self-expression but a creative framework to address social justice.
“We often understate the importance of art in our culture,” she said. “So the question of whether [art is] valuable becomes a very different question when you think about the totality of what art and design represent in our daily lives.”
[caption id="attachment_423680" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]
PERSON OF NOTE: Rhode Island School of Design President Crystal Williams, center, appears with Providence-based Undertow Brass Band during her inauguration festivities in October.
COURTESY RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN/JO SITTENFELD[/caption]
Most former RISD presidents have had a visual arts background. As someone who works with literary forms, what tools does your artistic and professional experience allow you to bring to the table as an administrator? As someone who comes from the temporal arts, my way of thinking about the multiple disciplines that are reflected at RISD is unique. Because I do not emerge from one of the visual arts, I see all of them and I experience all of them with the same kind of joy, curiosity and appreciation. And I think my ability to speak about the values of art and design and to synthesize that is something that the board of trustees and the search committee valued.
I grew up in a house where all the arts were very deeply valued and present. And I grew up going to museums both in Detroit and around the world. And so the arts were a living thing in our family.
My knowledge of what it takes to train young people to bring something into the world that is in their head but does not exist, which is what I did as a faculty member for many years, is something that was attractive to [the RISD board of trustees].
How important is it for students to be exposed to art at an early age? An engagement in the arts is essential for all humans, but it is particularly essential for young people. The arts impact and inspire us to think conceptually, metaphorically and critically. They provide essential connections between humans. Whether you are a young person in Providence, R.I., visiting the RISD Museum looking at a textile that was made in Singapore 200 years ago or a young person looking at a painting by a painter from South Africa in 2015, the arts are one of the only ways that I know of that really does ask us to not only connect to different ways of thinking and experiencing but to connect to what is our most common core. The arts are the things that express our essential nature as human beings.
There is a cliché that graduates of art schools have fewer opportunities in the workforce. What is your reaction to this assumption? The dialectic between a thing that you are passionate about and [the need] to make a living is not one I always agree with. The means by which graduates in art and design in education make their way in the world are incredibly varied and often invisible to those of us who undertake more traditional means of work. But they are no less important.
There seems to be a growing appreciation of the creative arts in the corporate world, particularly in advertising. Have you noticed this? Can you speak about some collaborations at RISD with the private sector? There is an increased awareness on behalf of corporations and private sector entities of the value of design thinking and creative thinking in relation to solving problems, which is what all of us are about. Solving problems broadly. For example, we have corporate partnerships that are related to research.
We have the Nature Lab, which has been in existence for 85 years. It features all things in the natural world. Some years ago, Hyundai Motor Co. contacted us because they were interested in mobility broadly. So, they asked about spending some time in our lab to think about how the natural world moves, and through that exploration merged a research partnership where our students work with their designers about big questions about mobility. That collaboration has been happening for three years. Just this summer some Hyundai designers spent a week on our campus with students and faculty, and our students also went to their headquarters.
It is a beautiful collaboration because it asks the traditional designers to think differently about the work they are undertaking. And it asks our students to think uniquely about mobility and cooperative work. There are many of these kinds of collaborations that are happening here because private corporations have started to understand the value of asking different questions. And that is one of the things that we do well.
[caption id="attachment_423681" align="aligncenter" width="1818"]
EVOLVING ENROLLMENT
Rhode Island School of Design President Crystal Williams says the school has been
working hard to ensure the makeup of its 2,600 full-time students is “global and diverse,”
although she acknowledges there's "always room for improvement." /
SOURCE: RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN[/caption]
There have been calls to amend the payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreements between higher education institutions and the city. RISD paid $1.4 million to Providence in fiscal 2022, including PILOT, parking fees and other taxes paid by a RISD subsidiary. How do you respond to people who say that schools such as RISD should contribute more financially to the city? We do participate in a PILOT program. But I would underscore that our institutions participate in the civic life and economic well-being of the city in substantial ways that often are not as visible to the public as I sometimes wish they were. One of the things that I find really fascinating about Providence is that it articulates itself as being the creative capital. A number of alums who have stayed here in the city have created small businesses here and impact and inform our city’s ability to articulate itself, which is significant.
We are also participating in the economic life of the city [in ways] that I think … [are] important. We have Project Open Door, where we go into public schools and work with students in art education. Likewise, we have many points of access to the museum for students and young people.
We also have a young curator’s program, where Providence-based young people are learning about the inner workings of the museum, which is one of the first places where all young people have access to art. Every semester they decide on a collective project. A recent one was to work on the acquisition of a piece of art – a drawing of a group of young people, all of whom have their faces obscured. It is a piece about anonymity and invisibility and being young. And these students are asking the public to engage with them in a larger conversation about what it means to be young in this complicated world.
RISD has been at the forefront of the movement to return artworks that were looted in colonial conquests. Will every piece of art at the museum be investigated to make sure it was not acquired unlawfully or immorally? As we become aware of instances where art that we own as a museum has been stolen, then our stance on that is the art should be returned to the rightful owners if we find evidence of the theft, which is how the Benin Bronze repatriation happened. [A bronze sculpture in the RISD collection since 1939 was returned to the Nigerian National Collection in October after it was learned the sculpture was among artifacts looted from Nigeria in 1897.]
As a new leader taking over in an established institution, what have you heard from the RISD community as far as changes that should be made? The board inquired to the community and what we heard was a real desire to continue to build on the work that the institution had already articulated around social equity and inclusion. That we as an institution [should be] focused on creating more access to students from around the world so the most promising creatives will come to RISD. That we want to be more connected both within our own community and communities outside. These are things that we want to continue to build upon and deepen. So, no hard right turns [but] a continuation of a commitment to excellence and to deepen and embody our stated principles, which are sound and will continue to be about the advancement of artists and designers in the world.
Student housing has been a hot topic in Providence recently. What is the state of student housing at RISD? RISD opened a new residence hall, North Hall [60 Waterman St.] in fall 2019. We do not have any plans to further increase capacity at this time. RISD requires first- and second-year undergraduate students to live on campus, and we have availability for juniors and seniors to live on campus if they choose to. We have been able to meet this demand from juniors and seniors without increasing our current inventory.
What are your feelings on the state of RISD’s diversity in both students and faculty? Are you pleased with where it stands now? Like all organizations in this country, there is always room for improvement in relation to diversity, social equity and inclusion. We have in the last five years been keenly focused on the diversification of our student body and our staff and faculty. We just finished a 10-cluster [faculty] hire focused on race and pedagogy. And that allows us to embed very quickly one of our central principles and goals across the disciplines and throughout the institution.
We have also been working hard to make sure that our student body is global and diverse. We have more than 68 countries represented within our student body. And that kind of diversity means that our students can learn among a population of global thinkers. It also means they will go out into the work with skills that allow them to collaborate fluidly with people with divergent backgrounds who think differently about questions of cultural identity. So, we are proud, but there is still lots of work for us to do. And we are committed to doing it.
