“IT’S ONE THING TO SEE a Diego Rivera mural in an auditorium slide show,” says Assistant Professor Sean Nesselrode Moncada. “But it’s totally different to see it on-site, in conversation not only with the architecture but also with the climate, the food, the language, the people. It’s an experience you just can’t get in a classroom or from a book.”
“It’s an experience you just can’t get in a classroom or from a book.”ASSISTANT PROFESSOR SEAN NESSELRODE MONCADA
Moncada recently partnered with longtime RISD faculty member Winifred Lambrechtto teach Pre-Columbian Architecture and Traditional Crafts In Mexico, one of three Wintersession travel courses that brought students south of the border in January and February…Read More
Designer Karla López Rivera 04 FD is among the residents of Puerto Rico who are working to pull the US territory out of a crippling, long-term recession. Even before Hurricane Maria hit in September 2017 and left the island literally powerless to rebuild, local businesses were navigating a debt crisis that caused many to close up shop.
But now Puerto Rican startups are on the rise, and Isleñas (Islander), the socially responsible footwear company López launched after returning to the island in 2018, is among them.
“Maria really pushed the decision for me to move back,” López says. “I’d been away for 14 years [but] I had those feelings of urgency to come back and help.”Read More
306 Hollywood, an extraordinary documentary about an ordinary life well lived, aired on the PBS show POV earlier this month and is viewable through April 16 via POVonline.
Billed as “an archaeological excavation” of their late grandmother’s house in New Jersey, the 94-minute film by siblings Elan and Jonathan Bogarín 00 PT is full of the magical realism of some of the best Latin American literature and is the first full-length documentary they’ve made together.
Since its premiere at Sundance in 2018 and subsequent screenings that began last fall, 306 Hollywood has been finding a warm reception with critics and audiences around the country. With this month’s POV release, it’s now getting wider exposure and is also streaming on Amazon and available on iTunes…Read More
When she visited campus in early November as part of RISD’s Social Equity and Inclusion Initiative, playwright, screenwriter, producer and directorLynn Nottage took time to answer a question that she’s been fielding a lot lately: Why be a theater artist in a time of crisis?
It’s striking that a writer whose honors include two Pulitzer prizes (Nottage is the only woman to have received the award twice) and a MacArthur “genius” grant grapples with an existential question as basic as this one, but such is our current political climate. Creative professionals are taking stock of whether or not their work is bettering the world around them, and whether or not they feel it should.
During her visit, Nottage joined Professor Mark Sherman in an informal discussion with students.
Throughout her career, Nottage has used her art to reveal and elevate instances of social and economic inequity. She won her first Pulitzer Prize for Ruined, a play about the wave of sexual violence that accompanied the Congolese Civil War, and has also written plays dramatizing the garment industry, the illegal ivory trade and domestic service. For Nottage, a major call to action came in 2008 at the beginning of the financial crisis when a close friend admitted to being in economic dire straits. For catharsis and clarity, she and her friend spent some time in NYC’s Zuccotti Park talking with Occupy Wall Street protestors. The experience “forced [her] to realize that we all live within shouting distance of someone in crisis.”…Click to Read More
