Archaeology will get a boost this fall when Rhode Island Hall, the Green’s most anonymous building, reopens as the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World.
Thanks to the largesse of Chancellor Emeritus A.W. Joukowsky ’55 and Professor Emerita of Old World Archaeology and Art and Anthropology Martha Sharp Joukowsky ’58, the building’s interior is being gutted and transformed. The building’s exterior is stucco-covered schist, which can be seen in recesses built into the new interior walls as a way of peering into the building’s past. (One can be seen in the lower part of this photo).
For its first 100 years or so, Rhode Island Hall was used as classrooms and, in the words of the Corporation, “the reception of geological and physiological specimens.” In recent decades it was chopped up into offices and some classrooms.
When the renovation is finished, the building will reclaim its vaulted appearance. Display cases featuring artifacts will be sprinkled throughout. There will be classrooms, faculty offices, seminar rooms, studios for studying archaeological objects, and a large multipurpose lecture room.
In a creative twist, Professor of Visual Art Richard Fishman salvaged some large ceiling joists removed during the renovation and hopes to lead art students in making benches from them for the building.