RISD Celebrates Founders Day

The RISD community is celebrating Founders Day on March 18th The celebration of Founders Day honors the entrepreneurial women who founded RISD in 1877 through a variety of special events and service activities in March. The College was founded and nurtured by a small group of women more than 40 years before women in America gained the right to vote. In 1877, Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf urged 34 members of the Rhode Island Women’s Centennial Commission to invest their group’s surplus funding of $1,675—which they had raised for Rhode Island's contribution to the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876—in founding a school of art and design.

Pictured: class photo from 1892 #RISDFoundersDay #Providence

RISD's Department of Teaching + Learning in Art + Design's is proud of its own legacy of commitment to public education, which stretches back to 1883 when a Class for Teachers was formed as part of the Saturday Classes and which has continued without a break to the present day.