The exhibit begins with a painting of a place I think I recognize: a sapphiric ribbon of wave twisted into sand; turquoise sky obscured by thunderheads. I edge closer, trying to guess which beach the artist captured — I’m at the RISD Museum, after all, in the Ocean State. Instead, a plaque informs medid not paint this scene from sight — his was fading under the effects of macular degeneration — but from memory. The seascape is an amalgamation of all those he once saw.
Beyond the painting, I catch sight of another familiar image:"The Sick Girl: The Artist's Sister" by Edvard Munch. I’d written about Munch’s lifelong illness while I struggled with recurring symptoms that followed a COVID-19 infection. I’d returned, again and again, to this depiction of his sister Sophie dying from tuberculosis — a disease that threatened the artist’s own health.
On the left, Thomas Sgouros' "Remembered Landscape," watercolor on paper, August 14, 1996. And on the right, Edvard Munch's "The Sick Girl," colored lithograph on paper, circa 1896. Both works are featured in the exhibit "Variance: Making, Unmaking, and Remaking Disability, on view at the RISD Museum January 29, 2022 through October 9, 2022.
“When I first proposed this exhibition, there was some uncertainty around if we would find enough representations in the collection,” Conor Moynihan, assistant curator of prints, drawings and photographs at the RISD Museum, told those of us on a tour of “.” “The truth is, illness and disability are always among us, we just have to know how to look for it.”
Moynihan’s curation helps viewers see what is ever-present in society, and all the more so during a pandemic. Disability has always been a part of human experience, as the exhibit, which spans centuries, shows us. The pandemic offers a microcosm of time through which we can examine how culture responds to the prevalence of disease and difference. While