risd presidents, 1877-2008

Biographical Sketches

E. Roger Mandle | Louis A. Fazzano | Thomas F. Schutte | Lee Hall | Talbot Rantoul | Donald M. Lay, Jr. | Albert Bush-Brown | John R. Frazier | Max W. Sullivan | Helen Metcalf Danforth | Eliza Greene Metcalf Radeke | Isaac Comstock Bates | William Carey Poland | Herbert Warren Ladd | Alfred Henry Littlefield | Royal Chapin Taft | Claudius Buchanan Farnsworth

E. Roger Mandle

1993-2008

Hackensack, NJ native Earl Roger Mandle earned his BA in Fine Arts from Williams College, his MA from New York University and his doctorate from Case Western Reserve University. He also received an honorary degree from Brown University in 2003. Mandle served as associate director of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, associate director and then director of the Toledo [OH] Museum of Art and as deputy director of the National Gallery of Art before coming to RISD in 1993.

During Mandle’s tenure RISD’s campus expanded into downtown Providence and the college launched its first comprehensive capital campaign. Known as The Future by Design, it raised a total of $105.46 million to increase funding for scholarships, academic and museum programs, and construction of The Chace Center, due to open in 2008.

Louis A. Fazzano

1992-1993
(interim president)

During the transitional period between the presidencies of Thomas Schutte and Roger Mandle, RISD Trustee Louis A. Fazzano served a one-year term as president. In his professional life, Fazzano worked at Imperial Knife Associated Companies, Inc., where he was treasurer and chief financial officer from 1970 until his retirement. He served as director of the Rhode Island Department of Economic Development, and president of Rhode Island Hospital. A founding member of Health and Education Leadership for Providence (HELP), he served as president of the nonprofit coalition from 1995 to 2004.

During his one-year presidency, Fazzano restored the academic titles of Provost and Dean at RISD, instituted a smoke-free policy and led negotiations for a new faculty contract. Under his leadership RISD purchased the Roitman Building (161 South Main Street; now home to the Industrial Design Department) and presided over the construction of the Daphne Farago Wing at The RISD Museum of Art. RISD faculty also adopted a Faculty Code of Ethics during his tenure.

In the 1980s and ’90s Fazzano and his brothers donated their extensive collection of American and British 19th- and 20th-century prints and drawings to The RISD Museum, which described the Fazzano brothers’ collection as “the greatest single gift of prints” in its history, numbering close to 2,000 items.

Thomas F. Schutte

1983-1992

Born in Rochester, NY in 1935, Thomas F. Schutte earned a BA from Valparaiso University, an MBA from Indiana University and a PhD in Business Administration from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He came to RISD from the Philadelphia College of Art, where he served as president from 1975-83. Schutte taught in the department of Marketing and International Business at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he also served as assistant dean. He was appointed president of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY in August 1993.

A $20-million renovation and expansion of RISD’s physical plant marks Schutte’s term of office. Major projects include the expansion of the RISD Quad housing and the Metcalf Refectory; the renovation of the What Cheer Garage, Benson Hall and the Design Center; the construction of the Museum of Art’s Daphne Farago Wing, and the purchase of the Providence-Washington Building, now home to many RISD administrative offices.

At RISD Schutte oversaw the creation of the Academic Computing Center and the restructuring of the Finance and Administrative Services departments. The Office of Institutional Research was created, visiting committees were revitalized and the Faculty Development Fund was established. Academic changes included the formalization of discrete degree-granting programs in Jewelry + Metalsmithing, Ceramics, Printmaking and Glass (1990), and the establishment of a Master of Landscape Architecture program (1990). In 1992 Schutte and the late Provost Hardu Keck reorganized RISD’s academic divisions into Fine Arts, Architecture + Design, Graduate Studies, Liberal Arts and Foundation Studies. Schutte fostered relationships with IBM, Disney, Japanese art and design institutions and, in 1986, reestablished RISD’s membership in the National Association of Schools of Art and Design.

Lee Hall

1975-1983

An artist by training, Lexington, NC native Lee Hall received a BFA from the University of North Carolina and her MA and PhD from New York University. Hall taught at SUNY (Potsdam, NY) and served as associate professor and head of the Department of Art at Keuka College (Keuka Park, NY). She also taught at Winthrop College (Rock Hill, SC) and then served as chair of the Department of Art, Drew University (Madison, NJ). Hall held the position of dean of Visual Arts at SUNY (Purchase, NY) before being appointed president of RISD. In addition, she worked for the National Endowment for the Humanities as a panelist, site visitor and consultant.

Serving during a period of conflict and reform on campus, Hall’s RISD presidency included a restructuring of financial administration, introducing computer systems for administration and planning, attempting to revise the Faculty Manual and allowing the faculty to unionize.

Hall maintained a painting studio at her farm in Lyme, CT. Her friendships with Betty Parsons, Elaine de Kooning and others frequently brought her to New York, where she exhibited her paintings at the Betty Parsons Gallery beginning in 1974. As president, she instituted the annual President’s Fellows Awards gala in New York City in 1978.

Hall resigned in 1983 to become a partner in the Betty Parsons Gallery. She then joined the Academy for Educational Development (NY) in 1984 as a senior vice president and director of the Office of Arts & Communication. She has written numerous books, including Betty Parsons: Artist, Dealer, Collector (1991) and Elaine and Bill, Portrait of a Marriage: The Lives of Willem and Elaine de Kooning (1993).

Talbot Rantoul

1969-1975

A graduate of Harvard College, Talbot Rantoul came to RISD from the Harvard Business School. Previously he worked as director of Design, Merchandising and Sales at Roxbury Carpet Co. in Saxonville, MA; vice president for Towle Silversmiths in Newburyport, MA; and as director of design for C. H. Masland Carpet Co. in Carlisle, PA and Bigelow-Sanford Carpet Co. in New York.

At RISD Rantoul led the movement to restore Woods-Gerry House (1969-71) for use as a gallery and administrative offices. He expanded RISD’s involvement in local affairs through Project Interface, an urban design proposal for downtown Providence, and an ecological study of Block Island. Rantoul presided over the Centennial Campaign, which resulted in the opening the Bayard Ewing Building and partial renovation of The RISD Museum of Art.

Andrews, Jacques and Rantoul, the architectural firm run by Rantoul’s father, designed the RISD President’s House at 132 Bowen Street, formerly owned by RISD Treasurer Stephen O. Metcalf.

Donald M. Lay, Jr.

1968-1969
(interim president)

Born in Bellerose, Long Island in 1915, Donald M. Lay, Jr. attended the University of Virginia before receiving his BA from Hofstra College and a Master’s in English from the University of Southern California. After service in the Naval Reserve as a pilot, he taught at Yale, the Hotchkiss School and the California Preparatory School. He served as a teacher and administrator at the Loomis School from 1948-62. He then accepted the position of headmaster at the Palm Beach Day School. Lay came to RISD in 1965 as Dean of Students and served as Dean of the College from 1967-76. He was appointed acting president for the 1968-69 academic year.

During Lay’s brief tenure, RISD began a study of Woods-Gerry and its use under Professor James Fowle’s leadership. Plans for Wintersession became a reality in January 1969. For the first time, RISD began offering high school and college students intensive six-week summer programs, now known as the Pre-College ad Summer Studies programs, respectively. In March 1969, President Lay hired John Torres to assist in the recruitment and counseling of minority students, who made up one-third of the summer enrollment. Torres stayed on at RISD to set up the Third World Program, the genesis of the current Office of Multicultural Affairs.

Lay left RISD in 1976 and returned to Florida to teach at the Ransom-Everglades School in Coconut Grove, FL.

Albert Bush-Brown

1962-1968

Author, critic, teacher and administrator, Albert Bush-Brown attended Deep Springs College in California before serving in the US Navy. Bush-Brown earned his AB, MFA and PhD from Princeton and taught there and at Case Western Reserve University before moving on to the Architecture Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the time of his RISD appointment, he was an associate professor and executive officer at MIT.

At RISD Bush-Brown oversaw the restructuring of the Architecture Department under the leadership of Warren Luther and the growth of the Photography Department under Harry Callahan. A new foundry, named in honor of Board of Trustees chairman and benefactor Arthur Homer, opened in 1968. Bush-Brown served on the Providence City Planning Commission and participated in the creation of the Research and Design Institute. He was a member of the National Council on the Arts from 1967-70. Bush-Brown undertook the creation of a new administrative manual and proposed numerous reforms, particularly for the Financial Department. He resigned from RISD in November 1967, effective July 31, 1968.

After his tenure at RISD Bush-Brown served as vice president for Facilities Planning at SUNY, Buffalo and became a special advisor to the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Appointed Chancellor of Long Island University in 1971, he retired as president in 1985 to establish Albert Bush-Brown Associates, a consulting firm.

John R. Frazier

1955-1962

A member of the RISD Classes of 1909 (Painting) and 1912 (Normal Art), John R. Frazier served the college in various capacities from 1923 until his death in 1966. His first appointment was as head of the Painting Department, followed by chair of the Fine Arts Department in 1946, when the academic departments were reorganized. Appointed as an interim president in 1955, he served until his retirement in 1962, when he became RISD President Emeritus.

Frazier began his career as an instructor at the Bradley Polytechnic Institute (Peoria, IL) and worked at the University of Kansas, School of Fine Arts (Lawrence, KS) as an assistant professor and head of the Painting Department. From 1912 until the late 1920s, he spent his summers on Cape Cod, MA at Charles W. Hawthorne’s Cape Cod School of Art (Provincetown), where he practiced his art and established his own Provincetown Summer School in 1930.

As president, Frazier instituted collegial ranks for faculty, began the movement towards a tenure system and revived faculty meetings, which led to a system of governance based upon administrative and faculty committees. He oversaw a capital campaign called Design for a Decade, which resulted in the construction of the Waterman Street dormitories (now known as the Quad) and Metcalf Refectory (The Met) in 1959. During his tenure, the Board of Trustees approved the creation of a Graduate Program in 1957 and launched RISD’s European Honors Program in Rome in 1960.

Max W. Sullivan

1947-1955

Max W. Sullivan came to RISD in 1944 as the director of Education at The RISD Museum of Art. Appointed Dean of the School in 1945, he succeeded Helen M. Danforth as president in May 1947 and served until his resignation in 1955. Sullivan earned his BA from Western State Teachers College (Kalamazoo, MI) and his MAT from Harvard University. Before coming to RISD, his teaching positions included the Cranbrook Academy (Bloomfield Hills, MI), Middlesex School (Concord, MA), and the Groton School (Groton, MA). He directed the Exhibition of Contemporary New England Handicrafts at the Worcester [MA] Art Museum (1942-43) and worked as a consultant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, from 1943-44.

Building upon the work of Executive Vice President Royal Bailey Farnum, in 1949 Sullivan led RISD’s successful application for accreditation from the New England Association of Secondary Schools and Colleges, and in 1953 the Architecture Department received accreditation from the National Architectural Accrediting Board. He appointed a Dean of Students to provide student counseling. In concert with the New England Textile Foundation, RISD undertook a major effort to revise and modernize the Textiles Department, in part to help stem the decline of New England’s textile industry.

Sullivan left RISD to become director of the Portland [OR] Art Museum, a position he held until 1960. As director of the Everson Museum of Art from 1961-71, he oversaw the construction of the first museum designed by I.M. Pei. Sullivan held the positions of program director and director of administrative services at the Kimbell Art Museum, and concluded his career at the University of Texas at Arlington as director of the University Art Gallery and exhibitions curator of the School of Architecture.

Helen Metcalf Danforth

1931-1947

Board of Trustees Chair,
1947-1965

Born in 1887 as the daughter of RISD Treasurer Stephen O. Metcalf, Helen M. Danforth married orthopedic surgeon Murray S. Danforth in 1916. Mrs. Danforth joined RISD’s Museum Committee in 1927, the year after the museum’s Radeke Building (named for her aunt, Eliza G. Radeke) opened. In 1931 Danforth succeeded the late Mrs. Radeke as president of the RISD Corporation and chair of the Executive Committee. She served as president until 1947 when she became chair of the Board of Trustees, an office created that year. Danforth retired as chair in 1965, after 34 years of leadership at RISD.

During Danforth’s tenure, RISD earned the authority to grant degrees (1932), issuing the first Bachelor in Art Education in 1937. Changes in the educational program made under the guidance of Royal Bailey Farnum transformed the day school into an accredited college program (1949). Campus expansion included the construction of the Helen Metcalf Building on College Street (1936), the RISD Auditorium (1941), and the Metcalf Refectory and dormitories on Waterman Street (now known as the Quad). Enrollment nearly tripled between 1931 and 1965.

Danforth received an honorary degree from Brown University in 1939, and in 1976, the first honorary degree awarded by RISD.

Eliza Greene Metcalf Radeke

1913-1931

Board of Directors/ Trustees
1886-1931

Born in 1854 in Augusta, GA, Eliza G. Radeke graduated from Vassar College in 1876, the same year she assisted her mother Helen Metcalf in preparing for the Rhode Island Women’s Commission exhibition at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. Eliza Metcalf married Dr. Gustav Radeke, a native of Hamburg, Germany, in 1880 and she and her husband took an active role in RISD soon after. Elected to the Board of Directors in 1886, she assisted her mother on the Committee of Management from that year through the rest of her long tenure as a pivotal leader at RISD. She was chair of the Committee from 1895-1931, a member of the Museum Committee from 1893-1931, and president from 1913-31.

Mrs. Radeke worked closely with artists, dealers and museum directors to develop The RISD Museum of Art’s extensive collection. She augmented the museum’s plaster cast collection and funded the building of the gallery (designed by Charles Platt) that connects Pendleton House to the 1926 building named in her honor. Her own collecting interests were catholic, ranging from 19th-century French paintings and drawings to Japanese prints, Native American pottery, folk art, American furniture, contemporary art and Greek and Roman antiquities.

In 1900, in honor of their father, Mrs. Radeke and her siblings created the Jesse Metcalf Memorial Fund for the purchase of works of art. Funded by her brothers Stephen and Jesse, the Eliza G. Radeke Building opened in 1926. The Radeke Memorial Garden, in the museum courtyard, dedicated in her honor in 1934.

Isaac Comstock Bates

1907-1913

Board of Trustees
1885-1913

Vice President
1891-1907

Committee of Management
1887

Executive Committee
1907-1913

Committee on Lecturers
1888-1893

Museum Committee
1893-1913

Committee of Finance
1894-1896

Committee on Buildings
1894-1901

Committee on Endowment
1902-1908

Library Committee
1907-1913

Blackstone, MA native Isaac Bates worked in his hometown post office during the Civil War, arriving in Providence in 1868 to work in the Comstock provision and meat packing business on Canal Street. He and Louis H. Comstock bought the family firm in 1880, creating Comstock & Co.

Having served as a trustee since 1885 and as vice president from 1891 to 1907, Bates had been involved in RISD, and particularly the museum, from its early days. He shared with his predecessor Mrs. Radeke a love of American art; as a member of the Providence Art Club, he knew and encouraged many local artists and formed important ties between them and the museum. He was also a collector who kept the museum in mind when he bought works of art; in 1894 he gave The RISD Museum a painting by William Merritt Chase called Lady in Pink, which had been featured at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. Bates joined other Providence collectors in acquiring major works of art for RISD and bequeathed countless paintings, prints, drawings and works of decorative art to the museum upon his tragic death in 1913.

William Carey Poland

1896-1907

Board of Directors/Trustees, ex-officio
1893-1917

Executive Committee
1900-1920

Museum Committee
1893-1902

A professor emeritus of art and graduate of Brown University, William C. Poland began his career at Brown as an instructor and assistant professor of Greek and Latin. He also served as a director of the Providence Art Club, RISD’s neighbor on College Hill.

Herbert Warren Ladd

1891-1896

Board of Directors/ Trustees
1893-1902

A native of New Bedford, MA, Herbert Ladd worked as a correspondent for the New Bedford Mercury (1861-64), covering Civil War battles. He entered the dry goods business in 1864 with the Boston firm of White Brown & Co., then the largest importer of foreign dress goods. Ladd moved to Providence in 1871 and opened his own dry goods firm, H.W. Ladd Company. Elected governor in 1889, he served as chairman of the New State House Commission, which ultimately led to the construction of the landmark McKim, Mead and White building.

In 1851 Littlefield was a partner of Littlefield Brothers, a dry goods firm in Pawtucket. He helped form David Ryder & Co. in 1852 for the manufacture of cotton thread and yarn. The company became Littlefield Brothers in 1857 and then Littlefield Manufacturing Company in 1889, with Littlefield as president. A Whig and a Republican, Littlefield served as governor of Rhode Island from 1880-83. Elected at RISD’s annual meeting, he declined to serve, resigning by letter, which was accepted at the next Board of Directors meeting.

Alfred Henry Littlefield

June 11-27, 1890 (resigned)

Board of Directors/ Trustees
1882-1893

Committee of Finance
1885-1893

Born in Northbridge, MA, Royal Taft moved to Providence in 1844 to work in the office of Royal Chapin, a woolen manufacturer. He formed Bradford & Taft in 1851 as a woolen manufacturing company, a concern he ran until 1885. A Whig and a Republican, Taft was elected governor of Rhode Island, serving from 1888-89, and also was a director of the Rhode Island Hospital Trust. Royal Chapin Taft, Jr. was elected to RISD’s Board of Trustees in 1907.

Royal Chapin Taft

1888-1890

Board of Directors/ Trustees,
1890-1906

Committee of Finance
1893-1907

Committee on Buildings
1894-1901

Endowment Committee
1902-1908

Claudius Buchanan Farnsworth

1877-1888

Board of Directors
1877

Honorary Member of the Association
1888

A graduate of Harvard College, Claudius Farnsworth studied at Harvard Law School before being admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1844. He practiced law in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, maintaining an office at Cole’s Block in Pawtucket, RI. Farnsworth served as treasurer of Dunnell Manufacturing Co., a textiles firm engaged in calico printing, from 1859-84. A member of the Rhode Island General Assembly, he brought the School of Design’s application for incorporation before that body.