Mixed-media Artist Rose B. Simpson to Deliver Keynote Address at Rhode Island School of Design 2025 Commencement

Alum Simpson will accept an honorary degree along with multidisciplinary artist and MacArthur Fellow María Magdalena Campos-Pons and author and illustrator Grace Lin

PROVIDENCE, RI – April 10, 2025 – On Saturday, May 31, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) will award degrees to 496 undergraduate and 226 graduate students at its 142nd Commencement ceremony. Commencement 2025 will take place at 9 am ET at the Amica Mutual Pavilion in downtown Providence followed by a community reception in Market Square to toast the Class of 2025. For more information on RISD’s 2025 Commencement and to view the ceremony streaming live on May 31, visit risd.edu/commencement.  

Rose B. Simpson MFA 11 CR, whose work explores modes of empowerment and resilience that connect past and present, will deliver the keynote address. Multidisciplinary artist and MacArthur Fellow María Magdalena Campos-Pons and author and illustrator Grace Lin 96 IL will receive honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees. 

Reunion Weekend will be held May 29–June 1 in conjunction with Commencement Weekend. Reunion activities celebrate all things RISD while bringing the alumni community together and welcoming its newest members, the Class of 2025. Public events include the RISD Craft art sale and WaterFire lighting on May 31. Details are available at alumni.risd.edu/reunions. 

Rose B. Simpson | keynote speaker and honorary degree recipient
Rose B. Simpson MFA 11 CR belongs to a long lineage of women from Khaʼpʼoe Ówîngeh (Santa Clara Pueblo), famous for producing blackware and redware pottery that dates back hundreds of years. In 2024, she debuted a public sculpture project at Madison Square Park and Inwood Hill Park, New York, and was featured in the Whitney Biennial. Her work reflects on the multilayered history of her home in New Mexico, exploring modes of empowerment and resilience that connect past and present, express experience and identity, and contemplate freedom and strength. She earned an MFA in ceramics from RISD and an MA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work is part of numerous museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn, the Guggenheim and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. She has mounted solo shows at the Norton Museum of Art, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, the Fabric Workshop and Museum and elsewhere. She continues to live and work in Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico and is represented by Jessica Silverman, San Francisco and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.    

María Magdalena Campos-Pons | honorary degree recipient
MacArthur Fellow María Magdalena Campos-Pons is a multidisciplinary artist exploring how memory, spirituality and identity are entangled with personal and collective histories across time and geographies. Campos-Pons’ artistic practice spans photography, performance, sculpture, drawing, painting and video, and her works often take the form of richly layered, multimedia installations. She earned degrees from the National School of Art, Havana and the Higher Institute of Art, Havana and attended the MFA program at the Massachusetts College of Art. She held the Bunting Fellowship in Visual Arts at Harvard University from 1993–94 and currently serves as the Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair and Professor of Fine Arts at Vanderbilt University, where she founded the Engine for Art, Democracy & Justice Program in 2018. She also launched Intermittent Rivers, a multi-artist initiative in Matanzas, Cuba in 2019 and GASP Gallery Artist Studio Projects in Boston in 2003, and served as consulting curator and ambassador for the inaugural Tennessee Triennial Re-Pair in 2023. Her work has been presented at a wide variety of venues, including Tate Modern, MoMA, Brooklyn Museum, Peabody Essex Museum, Documenta14, Venice Biennale, National Portrait Gallery, Frist Museum and the Havana Biennial. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Grace Lin | honorary degree recipient
Before RISD alum Grace Lin 96 IL became an award-winning, New York Times bestselling author/illustrator, she was the only Asian girl (other than her sisters) at her elementary school in upstate New York. That experience, good and bad, has influenced all of her books—including Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, which won a Newbery Honor; Ling & Ting, which was awarded a Geisel Honor; the National Book Awards finalist A Big Mooncake for Little Star, which was awarded a Caldecott Honor; and When the Sea Turned to Silver, a National Book Award finalist. The experience also led her to serve as an occasional New England Public Radio commentator, present a TEDx talk called The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf and contribute a video essay titled What to Do When You Realize Classic Books from Your Childhood Are Racist to PBS NewsHour. In 2016, Lin’s art was displayed at the White House, and she was recognized by President Obama’s office as a Champion of Change for Asian American and Pacific Islander Art and Storytelling. In 2022, she was awarded the Children’s Literature Legacy Award from the American Library Association.

A series of exhibitions leading up to Commencement will highlight new work produced by graduating students. Showcasing the work of grad students across 19 disciplines, Grad Show 2025 will be on view at the Rhode Island Convention Center from May 22–29. 

The work of seniors receiving undergraduate degrees will be featured by department throughout the spring semester in weekly shows at Woods-Gerry Gallery. Installation and work images are viewable online. 

About Rhode Island School of Design
RISD (pronounced “RIZ-dee”) is a creative community founded in 1877 in Providence, Rhode Island. Today, we enroll 2,518 students hailing from 57 countries. Led by a committed faculty, they are engaged in 44 full-time bachelor’s and master’s degree programs and supported by a worldwide network of over 33,000 alumni who demonstrate the vital role artists and designers play in today’s society. 

Beyond facts and figures, what is the spirit of this community? Through a cross-disciplinary curriculum of studio-based learning and rigorous study in the liberal arts, RISD students are encouraged to develop their own personal creative processes, but they are united by one guiding principle: in order to create, one must question. In cultivating expansive and elastic thinking, RISD seeks to activate a critical exchange that empowers artists, designers and scholars to generate and challenge the ideas that shape our world. RISD’s mission, at both the college and museum, is not only to educate students and the public in the creation and appreciation of works of art and design, but to transmit that knowledge and make global contributions. Visit risd.edu to learn more.

RISD contact:
Jaime Marland
Senior Director, Public Relations / RISD
jmarland@risd.edu
401 427-6954