A designer, professor and academic leader, President Rosanne Somerson has been committed to furthering RISD’s mission since she was a student here in the 1970s. She returned to RISD in the 1980s to teach and in 1995 founded the Furniture Design department. As president she frequently speaks and writes about the power of critical thinking and making, underscoring the value of art, design and a deeply immersive studio-based education to advancing life in the 21st century.
Deep roots at RISD
When she first arrived at RISD as a freshman in 1972, Rosanne Somerson 76 ID didn’t anticipate that it was the beginning of a lifelong connection to the college and its community. She had originally planned to study photography, but once she took an elective woodworking course her focus changed. “I found it to be incredibly exciting—and the hardest thing I had ever done,” she remembers. “I was challenged as I never had been before, but working in three dimensions was simpatico with my needs as an artist.”
Working closely with renowned woodworker, teacher and mentor Tage Frid and other faculty luminaries, Somerson soaked in everything she could about process, design, technique and aesthetics. She earned her BFA in Industrial Design (ID) in 1976, focusing on furniture within the ID department two decades before RISD had a freestanding Furniture Design department.
In 1978 Somerson established her own studio to focus on designing and making furniture full time. But when Frid invited her to take over for him in 1985, she readily accepted and went on to run the graduate furniture program in ID for 10 years before helping to conceive of and found the Furniture Design department. In 1995 she assumed the top leadership role in the new department, overseeing both the BFA and MFA programs and helping to establish its solid reputation for educating exciting new innovators in the field.
Somerson served as Furniture Design department head from 1995–2011, with a brief hiatus to step in as interim associate provost from 2005–07. In 2011 she was invited to become interim provost and the following year earned the provost’s position after emerging as the top candidate in an international search.
RISD’s Board of Trustees appointed Somerson RISD’s 17th president on February 18, 2015 after conducting a comprehensive international search during which she served as interim president from January 1, 2014 until her permanent appointment.
Somerson’s studio practice
Since establishing her studio practice in 1979, Somerson has continued to pursue her own work as much as her expanding leadership responsibilities allow. “My studio work is very personal,” she says, noting that she always thinks of furniture in terms of people’s needs and what it conveys about specific cultures and historical moments. But she draws inspiration less from existing cultural artifacts than from nature—and “even the structure of interpersonal relationships,” she explains.
Somerson’s work is featured in numerous books and publications, and has been exhibited throughout the US and internationally, including at the Louvre in Paris. Somerson’s furniture is represented in private, corporate and museum collections, most notably at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Fuller Craft Museum, the Huntsville [AL] Museum of Art, the RISD Museum, the Smith College Museum of Art, Yale University Art Gallery and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
“Ultimately I want to make things with their own forms of beauty that have a positive influence on the everyday lives of the people who own and use them,” Somerson says. “Objects play a big role in the havens people create in their own homes. I’ve always made furniture designed to be a positive part of that.”
In the media
Modern Magazine
President’s Cabinet
Board of Trustees
The primary responsibilities of the Board of Trustees are to:
- advance RISD’s mission
- provide organizational oversight
- set policies
-
Michael H. Spalter P 22
Providence, RI
Chair
financier, digital art collector
-
Richard W. Haining, Sr. P 05
Atlanta, GA
Vice Chair
retired (former Vice President and Investment Counselor, Montag & Caldwell)
-
Jon Kamen P 09
New York, NY
Vice Chair
Chairman, CEO, RadicalMedia
-
Margaret A. Williams
Westerly, RI
Vice Chair
Co-Founder and Partner, Griffin Williams Critical Point Management, LLC
Officers of the Board
-
Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani
New York, NY
Chair, Qatar Museums, Doha Film Institute and Qatar Leadership
-
David C. Barclay P 10
Los Angeles, CA
retired (former Senior Vice President and Director, Capital Research and Management Company)
-
Caroline Baumann
New York, NY
Director, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
-
J. Scott Burns
Providence, RI
retired (former Managing Partner, Brown Rudnick)
-
Ilene Chaiken 79 GD/P 18
Los Angeles, CA
writer, producer, showrunner
-
Erica Gerard Di Bona P 11
Los Angeles, CA
independent fundraising consultant
-
Kim Gassett-Schiller P 14
Half Moon Bay, CA
independent sales consultant, Longaberger Company
-
Joe Gebbia 05 GD/ID
San Francisco, CA
Co-Founder and CPO, Airbnb, Inc.
-
Robert W. Glass P 11
San Francisco, CA
Executive Vice President of Corporate Development, Robert Half International
-
Karen Hammond
Providence, RI
retired (former Managing Director, Devonshire Investors)
-
Vikram Kirloskar P 12
Bangalore, India
Chairman and Managing Director, Kirloskar Systems LTD
Vice Chairman, Toyota Kirloskar Motors Private LTD -
Mary Lovejoy
Barrington, RI
retired (former Vice President and Treasurer, Textron)
-
Nicole J. Miller 73 AP
New York, NY
fashion designer and Co-Founder/President, Kobra International Ltd.
-
Stacey Nicholas P 21
Laguna Hills, CA
Founder, Opus Foundation
-
Steven G. Perelman
New York, NY
Associate, Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP
-
Lisa Pevaroff-Cohn 83 TX
New York, NY
artist, jewelry designer, philanthropist
-
Tavares Strachan 03 GL
New York, NY
artist
-
Roland V. Sturm P 17
Las Vegas, NV
real estate developer
Term Trustees
-
Stephen A. Metcalf
Providence, RI
Chair, Emeriti Trustees
sculptor, printmaker, philanthropist
-
Michael Rock MFA 84 GD
New York, NY
Member, President's Alumni Advisory Council
Founding Partner and Creative Director, 2x4
-
William Schweizer P 19
New York, NY
Co-Chair, RISD Parents Council
Vice Chairman of Clinical Affairs, NYU Langone Medical Center
-
Rosanne Somerson 76 ID
Providence, RI
President, Rhode Island School of Design
Ex Officio Trustees
-
John H. Beug P 05
Santa Monica, CA
-
Anthony C. Belluschi BArch 66/P 95
Portland, OR
-
Jane Chace Carroll
New York, NY
-
Clara M. Dale BArch 75
New York, NY
-
Susan W. Dryfoos P 01
New York, NY
-
Bayard C. Ewing
Denver, CO
-
Louis A. Fazzano
Newport, RI
-
Anne B. Fordyce 67 SC
Watertown, MA
-
Peter B. Freeman
Providence, RI
-
Katherine Freygang 80 IA/MFA 81 GD
Cornwall, CT
-
A. Corwin Frost 59 AR/P 97
Bronxville, NY
-
Wilfrid L. Gates, Jr. 65 LA
North Kingstown, RI
-
Paula Koffler Granoff
Providence, RI
-
William R. Hammer BArch 65
Cambridge, MA
-
Ronne Hartfield
Chicago, IL
-
Dorothy Hebden-Heath 57 PT
Boston, MA
-
Erma W. Leavitt 44 PT
Boca Raton, FL
-
Se-Ung Lee P 91
Seoul, Korea
-
David A. Macaulay BArch 69
Norwich, VT
-
Pauline C. Metcalf
New York, NY
-
Stephen A. Metcalf
Providence, RI
-
Stuart J. Murphy 64 IL/P 96
Boston, MA
-
J. Terrence Murray
Narragansett, RI
-
Dana M. Newbrook 63 AR
Cumberland, RI
-
Joan Ress Reeves
Providence, RI
-
M. Kate Rittmann P 95
Orinda, CA
-
Merrill W. Sherman
Jamestown, RI
-
Philip E. Tobey BArch 66
Reston, VA
-
William J. Watkins P 83
Sarasota Square, FL
-
Patricia A. White 64 IL/P 96
Cambridge, MA
Emeriti Trustees
* RISD alumni are noted by a class year and major acronym following their names. Parents and grandparents of alumni are designated by P or GP, plus the year of graduation.