PROVIDENCE, RI.- Visitors to the RISD Museum’s exhibition, “Re-Viewing the Twentieth Century,” will experience a time-trip through one of the most transformative centuries in art. The exhibit features 100 works by international artists and spans the century, from Henri Le Fauconnier’s monumental Cubist narrative painting Mountaineers Attacked by Bears (1910-12) to Sol LeWitt’s coolly measured Minimalist structure, Six Towers (1987). It is the Museum’s largest presentation of twentieth century art to date, and is drawn entirely from the permanent collection.

This exuberant and idiosyncratic overview of a period underscores how art changed and artistic forms multiplied more dramatically than at any other time in history. Now, less than a decade into the new century, the Museum invites viewers to assess the iconoclastic recent past and to reflect on the ideas that feed the art of the future.

Organized around a series of questions, the “Re-Viewing” is displayed in four galleries that represent the architectural history of the Museum. The exhibition begins in the contemporary Daphne Farago Wing where it considers the art of the late twentieth century. “Why is it Art?” is the first question to confront the viewer, an honest sentiment about works composed of fluorescent lightbulbs, laminated planks, and video loops that sometimes obscure their links to tradition. As the visitor proceeds into the original 1890s galleries, “Who are we?” explores the identities of the makers and viewers of art, raising questions about who is represented and how they are depicted. Within the mix, Fernando Botero’s La Familia Pinzón and Andy Warhol’s Race Riot represent moments of cultural abundance and shame.

“What happened to Art?” documents the explosion of styles and media that characterized the twentieth century, racing from the fractured imagery of early Cubism to the Pop Art of the 1960s. Juxtapositions within the great Beaux-Arts hall reveal unexpected links and contradictions between early and late twentieth century art. The connection between Expressionist portraiture in pre-World War I Europe and Abstract Expressionism in post World War II New York becomes evident when Mark Rothko’s shimmering red canvas confronts Oskar Kokoschka’s 1913 Portrait of Franz Hauer. Time markers that stand at opposite poles in terms of construction are Wifredo Lam’s Surrealist hallucination The Eternal Present (1944) and Roy Lichtenstein’s highly ordered Pyramids II of 1969. Dresses by Madeleine Vionnet and André Courrèges, and furniture by Josef Hoffman, among others, illustrate how the decorative arts responded to the same cultural environment as the fine arts.

Following in reverse chronology, the final gallery asks “How did we get there?” and revisits the importance of Paul Cézanne and the impact of the 1913 Armory Show on American art. Viewers encounter the works of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, and Marcel Duchamp from these seminal years of the century and discover the passion, irreverence, and individualism that characterize the art of the past hundred years at every distinct moment.

The exhibition includes paintings and sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs, textiles, costume, and decorative arts. It has been conceived as a test drive for ways in which the Museum’s twentieth century collections might be presented when its galleries are renovated as part of the current expansion project. The exhibition was organized by Maureen O’Brien, Curator of Painting and Sculpture; Judith Tannenbaum, Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art; Jan Howard, Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs; and Madelyn Shaw, Acting Curator of Costume and Textiles.

The RISD Museum of Art, a world-class museum in Providence, RI, was founded as part of Rhode Island School of Design in 1877. Its permanent collection of more than 84,000 objects includes paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, costume, furniture, and other works of art from every part of the world, including objects from Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and art of all periods from Asia, Europe, and the Americas, up to the latest in contemporary art. In addition, the Museum offers a wide array of educational and public programs.