Patti Smith read, sang and touched the crowd who came to see her at RISD.
RISD Museum Director John Smith
Patti Smith Has the Power In a rare public appearance, Patti Smith visited RISD on October 2 to deliver the RISD Museum’s 2013 Gail Silver Memorial Lecture—in this case, presented as an informal compilation of readings from her books, peppered with a few songs. “Like the best American artists, Patti continually pushes boundaries and opens new frontiers,” Museum Director John Smith noted in welcoming her on stage. “Her work can feel improvisational, yet it is carefully and purposefully crafted. I can’t think of any American artist who contains more multitudes.” Speaking to an overflow crowd at the RISD Auditorium, the “godmother of punk” read several 50
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passages from Just Kids, her National Book Awardwinning memoir chronicling her years with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe as the two of them were just starting out. In one of the most charged moments of the night, Smith recited the lyrics to her famous song People Have the Power, driving home the beauty and urgency of the message through the rhythm of her poetry. She also sang a few songs and shared the story behind Because the Night, a chart-topping hit she co-wrote with Bruce Springstein in 1978. At the end of the evening—after allowing herself a few minutes to make good on her threat to lecture about dental hygiene—Smith took a moment to expound on the importance of nonviolent civil disobedience. “We need to do as Ghandi told us,” she said. “If we don’t unite as a people—and take things into our own hands—the government, corporations, pharmaceutical companies and the defense [department] will just keep running our world. It’s up to us.”
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Making American Identity Making It in America, a major RISD Museum exhibition continuing through February 9, presents more than 100 works from the permanent collection in a new light, with an emphasis on the craftsmanship and making central to RISD’s own creative culture. The double entendre in the title refers to both the process that went into creating the painting, sculpture and decorative arts in the exhibition and the people who were financially successful enough to own and invest in it. Overall, by focusing on selected work created between the early 1700s and the early 1900s, the show sheds light on the role artists and designers played in shaping American identity. left: photo courtesy of the RISD Museum, Providence, RI | top: photos by David O’Connor
“Like the best American artists, Patti continually pushes boundaries and opens new frontiers.”