Major UK Art Collection Coming to RISD Museum

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Tuesday, May 17, 2011

GoLocalProv Arts Team

It continues to be a big year for the RISD Museum. On the (high) heels of the Cocktail Culture exhibit, the museum has just announced its next major show.

Showcasing one of the largest collections of contemporary British art in the US, Made in the UK: Contemporary Art from the Richard Brown Baker Collection richly captures Britain's contemporary art scene, as it emerged from WWII to become a dominant force on the world stage today. Made in the UK opens September 23, 2011, and will be on view through January 8, 2012, at the Museum.

Richard Brown Baker

Richard Brown Baker (1912-2002) was a native of Providence, and is known to have had an intuitive eye for choosing works by young, unestablished artists on the verge of success - including David Hockney, Bridget Riley, Howard Hodgkin, and Patrick Caulfield. Baker was called "one of the most important collectors of 20th-century paintings, prints, drawings and sculpture" by the New York Times. Baker gave his British artworks to the RISD Museum, plus a fund that has enabled the Museum to acquire new works by living British artists. He also made a major gift to Yale University Art Gallery.

This exhibition of approximately 100 objects shows important British contributions to, and the international nature of, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Geometric Abstraction, Op Art, Photorealism, and the conceptual works by the Young British Artists (YBAs), who took the art world by storm in the 1990s and continue to break new ground.