PROVIDENCE, RI.- – After a year-long national search, the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, is pleased to announce today the appointment of Hope Alswang, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, as RISD Museum Director, effective September 12, 2005.

RISD President Roger Mandle said, “I am exceptionally pleased that we have been able to attract Hope Alswang to join RISD as our distinguished new Museum Director. Her experience, her enthusiasm, and her ideas for the use of great collections to engage the broadest possible interest in art and design convinced us she was the person we must have as our director. She will be an engaging colleague, friend, and advocate for the arts at RISD. She will lead the Museum to enhance its reputation as one of America’s great museums of art and design.”

This appointment comes at an important moment for The RISD Museum, which was founded in 1877 and has built a permanent collection of nearly 80,000 objects ranging across all media and periods. Slated to break ground in 2006, the Chace Center, a building designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Spanish architect José Rafael Moneo, will expand and reorient the Museum. Alswang’s record of leadership in building community support and organizing inspired exhibitions and education programs will clearly benefit RISD during this important phase of institutional growth.

“It is a great honor to be asked to lead The RISD Museum at this time in its history,” said Alswang. “The superb collections and stellar staff make it one of America’s cultural jewels. I am looking forward to working on the Chace Center, which will create expanded programmatic opportunities allowing the Museum to better serve the school and the community and will ensure the Museum’s rightful place as an important national resource. The chance to be part of America’s premier art school makes this job particularly exciting.”

Alswang has been at the Shelburne Museum since 1997. Previously she served as Executive Director of the New Jersey Historical Society from 1992-1997, and prior to that was Director for the Museum Program, New York State Council on the Arts. She holds a degree in American History from Goddard College, VT, and has undertaken graduate studies at Columbia University. She has taught for the Graduate Program in the History of Decorative Arts at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum/Parsons School of Design as well as in the School of Architecture and Planning, Columbia University.

Alswang co-authored American Interiors, New England and the South with Donald C. Pierce (Brooklyn Museum, 1983), and has published articles for the New York State Council on the Arts study Saving Large Estates. She has consulted for the Smithsonian Institution; the Concord Museum; the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Maryland Historical Society; and the Atlanta History Center.
The Shelburne Museum, led by Alswang since 1997, is the largest museum in northern New England, boasting a collection of over 150,000 works. The collection includes comprehensive holdings in American furniture, textiles, paintings, folk art, and an outstanding collection of French Impressionist paintings. Under Alswang’s direction, the Shelburne Museum has renovated five historic buildings, achieved its first balanced budget in 14 years, and updated exhibitions that had not been changed since the 1950s. Alswang is credited with reviving the institution through interactive exhibitions and projects such as last year’s “Pedal to the Metal: A History of Children’s Pedal Cars,” and Collector’s House, a futuristic prototype for mass-produced housing that was built from shipping containers on the museum grounds in 2001.