Dale Chihuly, internationally renowned glass artist, has never had a show at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) before, although he is one of the school’s most famous graduates and a former faculty member who founded the glass program there 40 years ago.
But there’s a new show coming to the RISD Museum this week, a site-specific exhibition of Chihuly’s work that will mark the grand opening of The Chace Center, a five-story $34 million structure that is much more than a mere addition to the 1926 museum. The Chace Center combines a museum with classrooms, studio space and exhibition galleries for student work, along with a gift shop, café and 212-seat, first-floor auditorium for community events.
Designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Jose Rafael Moneo of Madrid, the interior of The Chace Center seems sleek and spare, with white walls, gray buffed cement floors and little to distract from the art on display, except for stunning scenes of Providence seen from windows strategically placed for the best views. The building is in a former parking lot at 20 North Main St., at the bottom of College Hill on the edge of downtown.
The grand opening is set for Sept. 27, when the RISD Museum in the new Chace Center will be open and free to the public from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., with performances, music and activities for adults and children.
Chihuly is delighted to have his first show at RISD mark such an auspicious event. “It makes me very proud to be there,” he told Providence Business News during a recent telephone interview from his home in Seattle. “I’ve been connected to RISD for a long, long time. I have a lot of friends in Providence, and to be able to come back and design an exhibition for this new space has been very enjoyable.”
Chihuly received his master’s degree in fine arts from RISD in 1968, majoring in ceramics. After spending a year in Venice at the famed Venini glass factory in Murano, he returned to join the faculty and founded the glass program, staying at RISD until 1982. His work is included in more than 200 museums worldwide and he has received numerous awards, including 10 honorary doctorates.
He has fond memories of Providence, its architecture and artistic ambience. “I do remember well a lot of things about Providence,” he said. “I suppose, first and foremost, would be the architecture of the East Side. I just love that neighborhood. I actually think it might be the nicest neighborhood I’ve ever seen in the United States. It’s stunning, and there’s hardly a new building for several square miles.”
He remembers Adler’s Hardware on Wickenden Street as a place where the owners “always took good care of their artist friends” and he vowed to revisit Federal Hill when he is in town this week for The Chace Center opening. “I love Federal Hill, the Italian shops and the Italian restaurants,” he said.
The Chihuly show at Chace features many of his newer works, dating mostly from 2006 and 2008. At the start is a stunning ceiling made up of 250 individual Chihuly glass pieces, a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes. Other highlights include chandeliers of silvered and gilded glass, forests of “neodymium” reeds that change color with the light, and “big black basket” forms that at 4-feet wide are among the largest pieces Chihuly ever made.
Complementing the display is a separate show entitled “Studio Glass in Rhode Island – The Chihuly Years,” exhibiting the art of nine former students of his. “A lot of those people actually live in Providence, live in the neighborhood,” he said of his protégés. “That goes to show how much people like Providence, because all those artists that are in that show work on their own and make a living, which means they could work anywhere.”
It wasn’t like that when he was here. “Myself and people in my time, we had to get a job teaching as a professor in order to get enough money to work,” he said. “I’m sure the prices have gone way up, but [Providence] is still a really good artist’s town.”
As for RISD, he called it “the greatest art school in the country, as far as I’m concerned.”
Chihuly was chosen to inaugurate The Chace Center because “we wanted something truly magnificent that would be exciting to all segments of the community, and we wanted something that had enormous appeal to a broad number of people and also resonated with the RISD story,” said Hope Alswang, director of the RISD Museum.
Chihuly, she said, is “huge” in the art world. “He is an international superstar.” •
