Alumni Outcomes
Whether at work in their studio, as part of a larger organization, or in collaboration on urgent issues ranging from climate change to emerging technologies, our graduates make an outsized impact in every field that values original thinking and skilled makers.
By the numbers
alumni worldwide
32,000
countries represented
94
Regional Alumni Clubs
41
Profiles on LinkedIn
12,856
MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellows
11
Forbes "30 Under 30" Honorees
51
Fulbright Scholars
109
Kleiner Perkins Fellows
12
Rearranging industries
Coming out of every discipline at RISD, a number of enterprising alumni have an uncanny knack for charting new paths that connect culture and commerce. They see the future and evolve accordingly.
Advocacy and activism
Documenting climate change at the ends of the earth, setting up NGOs to aid refugees in conflict zones, these alums are determined to pursue projects that matter and show how art and design can help create a more equitable world.
Material explorations
Natural autodidacts who look for the most original ways to bring their work to life, the following graduates navigate the edges of form and fabrication to make things you’ve never seen before.
Leading with sustainability
Making things comes at an inevitable cost to living systems. The creative impulses of these alumni are guided by a sense of stewardship—for their fields, for future generations, for the planet.
MacArthur Fellows
A total of 11 RISD graduates have been honored with the prestigious "genius grant" that supports the work of leading thinkers across many fields of art, science and beyond.
MacArthur Fellow Shahzia Sikander is from Lahore, Pakistan. Sikander pioneered the Neo-Miniature movement by transforming traditional miniature painting and, for the past 20 years, has worked to diversify contemporary art beyond its Eurocentric focus. Her recent sculptural work NOW was installed on the roof of the Appellate Courthouse on Madison Avenue in Manhattan.
Eisenman was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2015 and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work has appeared in the Venice Biennale and in three Whitney Biennials.
Kara Walker works across media to explore the complicated and violent histories of race and gender in the United States. Her monumental-scale works in the Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn and the Tate Modern in London are an evolution on themes she first began exploring through paper silhouettes.
On the move
Driven by momentum and a suspicion that there are more interesting ways to get from here to there, the following graduates are bringing creativity to the world of sport, transportation and beyond.
Storytellers
While the work of artists and designers has always been tied to narrative and documentary, the following alumni are finding fresh ways to convey unique perspectives on lived experience.
Award winners continued...
Beyond MacArthurs, our alumni have won Academy Awards, Pulitzer Prizes, Emmys, Caldecotts, Palmes d'Or and Guggenheim Fellowships, to name a few.
In 2019, Oge Mora won a Caldecott Honor, a Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent from the American Library Association and an Ezra Jack Keats Award for her collage-style book, Thank You, Omu, inspired by her relationship with her Nigerian grandmother.
Deborah Berke is the founding principal of the New York-based architecture firm TenBerke and the dean of the School of Architecture at Yale University. Deeply committed to advancing women in the profession, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is the first recipient of the Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Professorship and Prize. She received an honorary degree from RISD in 2005.
Three-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson is a longtime collaborator with director Quentin Tarantino, with whom he worked on the Kill Bill series, among others. His Oscar wins came for work done on Oliver Stone’s JFK and Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator and Hugo.
Studio artists
Though setting up a studio may be an expected route for graduates of art school, these artists have practices and bodies of work that stretch the limits of what their disciplines can do.
At work in Rhode Island
Providence and the rest of the state are home to an outsized crop of creative talent. Beyond the vision and ambition they bring to the scene, they build communities with collaborative energy and mutual admiration.
Latest stories
Hear more about our alum’s most recent projects and accomplishments.
Furniture Design alum Brodie Neill safeguards the planet, one piece of furniture at a time.
RISD alum Jevon Brown and 2016 exchange student Maika Palazuelos make Dwell’s annual list.
Manini Banerjee, Varun Mehta, Avantika Velho and Katia Zolotovsky are developing mycelium-based biofiltration pods capable of reseeding lost wetlands.
Image credits (from top to bottom): photo of Tavares Strachan by Guillame Ziccarelli (courtesy of Perrotin); Counterculture, 2022 photo by Stephanie Zollshan (courtesy of Rose B. Simpson, Jessica Silverman, San Francisco, and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York); INDO- photo by Ciara Crocker; Meow Wolf photo by Kate Russell; Polymode photo by Eschelon and Ian Byers Gamble; The Weaving Mill photo by Sarah Flotard; Karam Foundation photo courtesy of Karam Foundation; For RISD, 2006 photo by Erik Gould (© 2006 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society, NY); Tanya Aguiñiga photo by Gina Clyne; Ashleigh Axios/Official White House photo by Chuck Kennedy; Jolie Ngo photo by Tiffany Smith (courtesy of R & Company); Hub-2, Breakfast Corner, 260-7, Sungbook-Dong, Sungboo-Ku, Seoul, Korea, 2018 (© Do Ho Suh. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London; photo by Jeon Taegsu); Healthy Materials Lab photo by Nick Calcott; Ala Tannir photo by Gianluca Di Ioia (© Triennale Milano); photo of Nicole Eisenman © Bridgitte Lacombe; A Subtlety, 2014 photo by Jason Wyche; Sixth Street Viaduct photo by Iwaan Baan (courtesy of Michael Maltzan Architecture); No Finish Line photo (courtesy of Actual Source Books); Lily Douglas/NASA photo by Bill Stafford; Nicholas Rubin still illustration by Matt Huynh (courtesy of The New Yorker); NXTHVN, New Haven, CT photo by Chris Cooper / ArchExplorer (courtesy of TenBerke); We Come in Peace photo by Hyla Skopitz (courtesy of Huma Bhabha and Salon 94, New York; image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art); Still Here photo by Jo Sittenfeld; Lois Harada photo by Off the Ground Drone Services (courtesy of My HomeCourt).