The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the accessibility of design education to women.

[4] Today, RISD offers bachelor's and master's degree programs across 19 majors and enrolls approximately 2,000 undergraduate and 500 graduate students.

[5] The Rhode Island School of Design is affiliated with Brown University, whose campus sits immediately adjacent to RISD's on Providence's College Hill.

[8] The Rhode Island School of Design's founding is often traced back to Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf's 1876 visit to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

[10][14] For the first 15 years of its existence, RISD occupied a suite of six rooms on the fourth floor of the Hoppin Homestead Building in Downtown Providence.

[18] In July 2020, President Somerson began negotiations with the RISD faculty union over the avoidance of possible layoffs by suggesting cost-cutting measures.

[19] In the summer of 2020, after the Black Lives Matter and George Floyd protests, RISD students and alumni came forward to voice outrage at the institution for failing at social equity and inclusion.

[20][22] In April 2023, after months of negotiations, the RISD employees union held a picket line protest in demand of better wages.

[25] Students at RISD, along with many across the country in the BDS movement, occupied a campus building for multiple days in support of a cease-fire of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in early May 2024.

[35] In the past, RISD buildings were mostly located at the western edge of College Hill, between the Brown University campus and the Providence River.

In recent decades, RISD has acquired or built buildings on the downslope nearer the river, or in Downtown Providence just on the other side of the waterway.

[36]: 21 [37] The RISD Museum was founded in 1877 on the belief that art, artists, and the institutions that support them play pivotal roles in promoting broad civic engagement and creating more open societies.

[43] Lest the sexual innuendo of these team names and logos be lost or dismissed, the 2001 creation of the school's unofficial mascot, Scrotie, ended any ambiguity.

[75][76] Notable RISD faculty include photographers Diane Arbus, Aaron Siskind, and Elle Pérez, sculptor Simone Leigh, painters Jennifer Packer, Aaron Gilbert, and Angela Dufresne, architect Friedrich St. Florian, designer Victor Papanek, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri.