The Gallery at PPL

Providence Public Library (PPL), in partnership with AS220, OPEN, and the City of Providence’s Department of Art, Culture and Tourism (ACT), has formed a curatorial collaboration to activate and sustain the Library’s gallery spaces during a period of transition.

Following significant funding reductions in 2025, PPL made the difficult decision to eliminate dedicated humanities and gallery programming staff. Without intervention, one of Providence’s most visible and accessible exhibition spaces -the Joan T. Boghossian Exhibition Gallery – risked going dark at a time when artists across the region are facing fewer opportunities to show their work.

Rather than allow that to happen, PPL invited a cohort of trusted cultural partners – AS220, OPEN, and ACT – to share in the responsibility of curating and programming these spaces. Together, this group is working collaboratively to present exhibitions, support artists, and ensure that the Library remains an active and welcoming platform for creative expression.

Each organization contributes its own perspective and expertise, while sharing responsibility for artist selection, exhibition development, installation, and coordination with PPL’s communications team.

This collaboration is rooted in a shared belief that Providence is an incredibly vibrant arts community and that accessible, public-facing exhibition space is essential to that ecosystem.

If you are interested in proposing an exhibition or project, please fill out this form.  Please note that, at this time, funding for honoraria and production support is limited.

The Gallery is open during PPL’s operating hours, which you can find on their website here.

Signage sponsor: Wayfinder Collaborative; Photography services donated by Therese Iacono Photography. Media parter: Providence Eye.

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COMING SOON:

reharvest repair

a circular economy research project by Ayako Maruyama and Markus Berger

The Joan T. Boghossian Exhibition Gallery
150 Empire Street, 3rd Floor, Providence, Rhode Island
October 17-December 2, 2026
Reception October 17, 1-3pm

“Re-harvesting” challenges the traditional notion of waste as something useless or undesirable. It prompts us to see waste not as an end but as a beginning.

reharvest repair invites artists, designers, makers, repairers, hackers, scavengers, and re-makers to submit work for a curated exhibition exploring acts of re-harvesting and repair as creative, social, and ecological practices. Head curators Ayako Maruyama and Markus Berger are on the hunt for work that engages the afterlife of materials, especially those connected to the regions industrial, domestic, ecological, or community-based material streams. They are interested in projects that do not simply reuse waste, but rethink the values and conditions that made something “waste” in the first place.

Some examples:

• artworks
• tools
• prototypes
• repaired objects
• design objects
• speculative artifact

reharvest repair resists the notion of repair as mere restoration to an original state. Instead, it advances repair as an act of reconfiguration and transformation, cultivating renewed relationships among people, materials, place, and value. Repair is understood here not only as fixing, but as remaking, re-pairing, revaluing, and reimagining.

To be considered for the show, it is strongly advised that you first visit the reharvest repair project website and read all materials. Next, submit your artwork/s via their Google Form For more information, contact head curators Ayako and Markus at reharvest-repair@risd.edu.

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NOW ON VIEW:

Not Just Tapes
Sandy Dahari and Ben Sisto

The Joan T. Boghossian Exhibition Gallery
150 Empire Street, 3rd Floor, Providence, Rhode Island
July 11 – August 15, 2026
Reception July 11, 1:00 – 3:00 pm
with special guests Gayatri Kunchay and Shany Rajagopalan

Somewhat recently, artist Ben Sisto was tipped off to the presence of “many” VHS tapes in the basement of the Hope St. restaurant, Not Just Snacks. Ben visited owner Mohammed Islam and was shown a wall packed with Hindi-language bootlegs. Arranged neatly in rows, their faded labels read like a lost Agnes Martin painting. If you squint, it looks like a gene sequencing image. A real “Wow!” moment. A handshake deal was made, and Ben left with over 600 tapes. Ben shared an image of the tapes on a listserv and was promptly contacted by Sandy Dahari, a video editor who’d just been “shocked back to adolescence.” Sandy recalls, “I was no longer a 37-year-old Providence transplant, but again a Guyanese-American pre-teen intensely perusing titles in a small Indian-owned video store in New Jersey. I would’ve never thought to see these kinds of tapes again, not in 2026.”

Back when young Sandy was grabbing these tapes five for $10, they were the only way to access films of the 60s and 70s—a Bollywood golden age not yet available on DVD. No YouTube. In contrast with American individualism, Bollywood musicals told stories of unrequited lovers, familial strife, and diasporic struggles while underlining cultural principles like honoring parents and remembering one’s homeland. As Sandy explains: “South Asian-Americans, like all immigrants, are demanded to assimilate, to make ourselves palatable. Simultaneously, elders, guilt, and nostalgia demand that the culture and values of the homeland take precedence. To be of the diaspora is to be between. Between-ness is fuzzy, and here the lo-res quality of bootleg video recalls a specific moment in time, while also addressing the wobbliness of existing between cultures and generations.”

Not Just Tapes invites viewers to examine concepts of home and identity in the context of an abstracted living room. Whereas the outside world demands accepting the underlying discomfort in cultural conformity, the living rooms of immigrants are often carefully curated to soothe that discomfort. These rooms often contain literal altars, but they are altars themselves, decorated with figures, flags, portraits, collectibles, all touchstones to the homeland. Grab a tape from the TV console, pull up a chair, and get comfortable. Be kind, rewind.

Read the write-up in the Providence Eye here.

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PAST SHOWS:

PARIS+FRIENDS

Honoring the legacy of our friend and colleague Adrian “Paris” Fernandez, this group exhibition featured the work of over 60 artists who all worked with Paris in various times and spaces over the last decade+.  The exhibition paid homage to Paris by mirroring his style – invitation, collaboration, and determination — and highlights Paris’ artwork alongside the many friends who collaborated with him over the years – past, present and future.  

Thank you to everyone who brought your work and came to the April 4 celebration. The space was a testament to our friend in all his vibrant, multi-disciplinary, cross-cultural, brilliance.

The Joan T. Boghossian Exhibition Gallery
150 Empire Street, 3rd Floor, Providence, Rhode Island
March 2 – May 3, 2026
Reception April 4, 6-9pm