Book and Room
BOOK AND ROOM
JANUARY 2020
Votive Offerings: Glenn Gissler at RISD
by Lisa Zieger
Decorative arts historian Lisa Zeiger wrote an interesting article entitled VOTIVE OFFERINGS: GLENN GISSLER AT RISD about my relationship with my alma mater, the Rhode Island School of Design, and more specifically with the RISD Museum, on her blog BOOK AND ROOM.
As a RISD alum, former board member, and devoted museum donor, it’s been my goal to help give students and visitors the opportunity to experience and draw inspiration from the museum’s collection. Lisa’s post chronicles my decades-long quest to donate notable fine art, industrial design and decorative objects to the RISD Museum, with a personal goal of bequeathing 1000 objects in total. You can read the post by following this link.
I lived with many of these items in my NYC apartment before they found a new home at the RISD Museum, including a partners desk with two chairs by Donald Judd, and works on paper by Kiki Smith, Sol Lewitt, Leon Golub, and Vija Celmins. I also have passed along objects by the 19th century industrial designer Christopher Dresser, and 20th century objects by Josef Hoffmann, Ettore Sottsass, Joe Columbo and Russel Wright.
You’ll find just a selection of my notable donations to the museum below, and if you’re so inclined, you can follow this link to the museum’s website, which shows many more with descriptions and details.
This essay is about a plentiful cache of the most rarefied—and sometimes recondite—decorative art objects produced in the last two centuries contained in architect-designer Glenn Gissler’s applied arts trove. Since 1984, Glenn has been gifting these objets to the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art in an effort to augment the RISD Museum’s modern design collection. Glenn himself holds degrees in both Fine Art and Architecture from RISD, and the 200 or so smaller objects he has donated to the RISD Museum reflect an architect’s discipline; a connoisseur’s delectation.