Newport Art Museum “Dress Code” Exhibition Tour

Join Newport Art Museum staff on a tour of the current exhibition “Dress Code”, which examines how clothing and personal style can function as an unspoken language, consciously or unconsciously shaping how we are seen. Tools for personal expression, camouflage, or even protective armor, within the language of getting dressed garments carry connotations of gender, class, and cultural identity. The artists and designers featured in this exhibition break the “norms” of dress to present their bodies and selves on their own terms.

As part of DESIGN WEEK RI, Newport Art Museum curatorial and education staff will share the works of “Dress Code” exhibiting artists Bhen Alan, Lisa Anne Auerbach, Abigail Glaum-Lathbury, Baxter Koziol, Rey Londres, Lisa Z. Morgan, Zoë Pulley, and Jackey Robinson. Their works seek, in a variety of ways, to subvert the power of commercial branding and explore the ways in which dressing the body can be a transformative and empowering form of self-determination. Combined with social norms (such as dressing femininely or masculinely), narrow definitions of “appropriate attire” can mean that getting dressed involves a degree of negotiation each and every day. By breaking the “norms” of dress, the artists in this exhibition present their bodies and selves on their own terms.

Cristin Searles Bilodeau

As Director of Community Engagement at the Newport Art Museum since 2015, Cristin has been responsible for the many ways in which the Museum meets the public. This includes overseeing the Museum’s 6 front facing Museum Experience staff, training the Museum’s
Docent educators, developing content for and facilitating the guided tour program, and developing a wide range of engaging multi-disciplinary public programs. Cristin has also led the Museum’s internal Diversity, Equity, Access and Inclusion training for all Museum staff members since 2020, and ensured the implementation of many important changes that training has identified. Cristin has designed, organized and managed numerous large-scale programs at the Museum such as the annual Winter Speaker Series (since 2017), multiple community-wide events, and the Free for ALL Saturday program (2023).

Cristin is also a practicing sculpture and installation artist whose work is included in the permanent collections of Fidelity Investments, Sloan-Kettering Hospital, and the Westin Hotel in Snowmass, CO, and Rhode Island College, as well as many private collections.