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Located at the corner of Bowen and Brown Streets, East Andrews Room 152 is being hailed by art buffs and intoxicated Brown students as the "Met of the Northeast, except that one in New York and the RISD one, only I think the RISD one is just a dining hall and not a museum, anyway."
At the center of all this attention is freshman Rasheed DeFunk, the director of the gallery at Room 152, as it is locally known. DeFunk is the proud owner of renowned works such as Animal House, Johnny Depp Playing the Piano, and The Kiss (not the 1908 Gustav Klimt masterpiece, the one with two chicks making out). The Pink Floyd Back Catalogue and Beer Pong inspirational posters round out the gallery's permanent collection.
Director DeFunk spoke of each piece with great pride. "The originality and sheer imaginative prowess displayed by these artists sometimes still blows my mind. Sometimes I feel like I'm on the peak of a mountain, breathing air that no one else breathes."
This month, Room 152 is holding a special exhibition entitled "Huge Badasses," which features Muhammad Ali vs Sonny Liston and Scarface, both on loan from the nearby Morriss 312 gallery.
DeFunk has announced the next special exhibition will open on April 30 and run through the end of the school year. The feature will focus on the broad theme of illicit substances, and critics expect several posters of Bob Marley, as well as rare watercolors of cannabis plants. Most highly anticipated are the paintings from Monet's "Blackout" period, which have been mostly forgotten by collectors.
The gallery attracts mostly local residents, but has garnered visitors and support from places as distant as RISD, Perkins, and the belly of that monster that digests people for like 500 years from Return of the Jedi. The impressions left on visitors, however, are less varied and are overwhelmingly positive.
Juniors Lena Nichols and Hannah Groeger, both students at Brown with close ties to RISD and real art, agreed that the poster collection was one not to be missed.
"We never thought we'd be visiting some random freshman dorm room," said Nichols and Groeger, completely in unison, as if they had rehearsed their reply, "but we might even have to come back to see next month's show. This gallery is that amazing."
The only criticism of DeFunk's display was revealed by Director DeFunk himself, who confessed that some might construe the posters as cliché. When asked to elabotate, DeFunk gaily said, "It's okay because I don't speak any French. That is a French word, right?"
