RISD Honors the Class of 2025 at 142nd Commencement Ceremony

RISD celebrated the Class of 2025 at Commencement and Reunion Weekend with graduate hooding ceremonies, alumni reunions, a tented RISD Craft art sale, departmental receptions, a festive lunch in Market Square and, of course, the annual Commencement ceremony itself, welcoming 496 graduating undergrad students and 226 graduate students into the RISD alumni community. Led by Providence’s raucous street ensemble Extraordinary Rendition Band and longtime Painting Professor Dennis Congdon 75 PT, the resplendent stage party marched into the Amica Mutual Pavilion to the roar of applauding family members and loved ones.

“Your fire matters in these troubled times,” President Crystal Williams exclaimed. “You are the light in the darkness, and this is your time to stand up with pride and purpose.” She went on to acknowledge RISD’s international student community, naming each of the 40 countries from which the Class of 2025 hails. 

“Our differences are our strengths,” Williams added. “Languages, religions, cultures and traditions converge at RISD. The international community brings the world into our studios and crits, and into the future as artists and designers will define it.”

Undergraduate student speaker Valerie Mirra 25 PT, whose work weaves together painting and ecology, also referenced what Williams described as “the darkness that US cultural institutions and knowledge centers have entered,” noting in her personal and inspiring speech that “we must resist with intention” and that “each generation has made it through the ‘end of days.’”

International student Selina Wu MFA 25 GD—who was born and raised in Nanjing, China and describes herself as a graphic designer, typographer and image maker—delivered this year’s graduate student speech, acknowledging the long, late-night studio hours she and her classmates put in. “RISD is a playground for experimentation and risk taking,” she said, “and it lives in each of us now as part of our creative DNA. The ride doesn’t end here. Our greatest works lie ahead.”

Before the BFAs and master’s degrees were conferred, RISD honored three women artists with honorary doctorates: MacArthur Fellow and multidisciplinary artist/educator María Magdalena Campos-Pons, award-winning children’s book author/illustrator and Illustration department alum Grace Lin 96 IL and mixed-media artist and author Rose B. Simpson MFA 11 CR (Tewa), a Ceramics department alum who traveled from Santa Clara Pueblo (Kha’Po Owingeh) in New Mexico to deliver the keynote address.

After welcoming the community including “all the ancestors standing with us,” Simpson offered a compelling speech about her own struggle with impostor syndrome and ongoing quest to excavate her truest self. “There is always that nagging whisper: why me?” she said. “And after earning my MFA at RISD, I knew more of what I didn’t know. I hope you will have the audacity to question who you thought you were before RISD, make the necessary small adjustments and find your own moment of connectedness. Here’s to the journey!”

Watch the Commencement 2025 ceremony on Youtube.

Simone Solondz / photos by Jo Sittenfeld MFA 08 PH
June 5, 2025