Today from 4:30 - 6:30pm join RISD grad students as they explore the idea of public space in Providence. Pockets of it can be found anywhere in Providence - from parks to public bathrooms to sidewalks. Public space is somewhat subjective and affects people in their day-to-day lives, sometimes without their realizing it. We are raising questions today to get people to stop and think about what it means to be “members of the public.” Can everyone be a member? Or is it a choice? And how do we use our membership with the public as we move through spaces in our cities and towns?

Who Are We?
We are a group of graduate students and recent graduates who took RISD 0710H, a RISD/Brown collaboration class called Public Art: History, Theory, and Practice. Our Masters degrees are in a range of disciplines including photography, ceramics, arts education, landscape architecture, and public humanities. The class explored twentieth and twenty-first century public art: its history, themes, controversies, typologies, and administration. We studied and created proposals for war monuments and memorials, and proposed eleven different pieces of public art for Kennedy Plaza. What you are witnessing is a recreation of our final project.