Intimacy reveals something deeply human in us. We need each other on a practical level, which means having to trust strangers. It’s analogous to what I understand prayer requires and what writing poems requires: an openness to the unknown, coupled with trust, a belief that we won’t be hurt. It’s at once akin to and the same as devotion. —Carl Phillips
The RISD Museum’s 16th issue of Manual touches on the bonds of intimacy and its many expressions. This issue complements the exhibition Any distance between us, co-curated by Stephen Truax and Dominic Molon, on view at the RISD Museum through March 13, 2022.
From the Files
Gina Borromeo probes love and death in an ancient Greek alabastron
Judith Tannenbaum reencounters a series of photographs of two women dancing
Artists on Art
Christopher K. Ho and Troy Richards open up The Book of Ours
Matt Garza meditates on an untitled portrait of a same-sex couple
Double Takes
MariNaomi and Wai Yee Chiong get cozy with Kunisada’s Bed of Awakening: Nocturnal Pillow Talk
Diane Seuss and Angela Dufresne bond with Lydia (1776)
Laurie Simmons and Marisa Angell Brown embrace the complications of Eleanor, Chicago, 1949
Nafis M. White and Ahmari Benton join forces over Hair Necklace 4 (Chain)
Portfolio
Familiar connections and passionate flings from across the museum’s collection
Object Lessons
Stephen Truax lovingly documents the lineage of recent queer figurative painting in Any distance between us
Vanessa and Carl Jennings sing a little lullaby to a Kiowa cradleboard
Dominic Molon spends time with Annika von Hausswolff’s Where everything begins and ends #2
How To
Jessica Urick navigates conservation’s one-way intimacy
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