This exhibition explores some of the profound differences that characterize the past, present, and future of the United States.

Paintings, sculptures, and objects in other mediums prompt consideration of how race and class can define lived experience in America, address changing notions of domesticity and economic values, ponder the Constitution and the shifting contingencies of “freedom” that it presents, and reflect the often complicated relationships the country maintains internationally. The works in United Histories, and the conversations staged between them, encourage us to reexamine and reconsider American history from new and possibly challenging perspectives.

RISD Museum is supported by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, through an appropriation by the Rhode Island General Assembly and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and with the generous partnership of the Rhode Island School of Design, its Board of Trustees, and Museum Governors.