Exploding Airplane by Heide Fasnacht will be on display at the RISD Museum in an exhibit opening Friday.

Courtesy of Kent Gallery and Bernard Toale Gallery

It’s the stuff of disposable coffee cups and do-it-yourself home insulation. It’s been hailed as a scientific marvel and shunned as an environmental menace. And now, thanks to the RISD Museum, it’s about to join the likes of cast bronze and Carrara marble as a medium of artistic expression.

On Friday, the Providence museum opens “Styrofoam,” almost certainly the first-ever museum exhibition devoted to the creative possibilities of polystyrene thermal insulation, better known as Styrofoam. The show, which will be installed in the museum’s lower Farago Wing gallery, features foam-based works by Richard Tuttle, Heide Fasnacht and Sol Lewitt, among others.

Why Styrofoam? Let RISD curator Judith Tannenbaum explain.

“To me, the show is really about how artists see things — how they see the creative potential in stuff that most of us take for granted,” Tannenbaum says. “In modern art, there’s a long history of artists taking everyday materials and turning them into art. But Styrofoam? It’s so familiar — and at the same time it has such a bad rap in environmental circles — that it seemed to cry out for attention.”

Tannenbaum says the catalyst for the exhibition was a visit to last year’s Armory Show, a major contemporary art fair in New York City. While there, Tannenbaum saw the work of Folkert de Jong, a young Dutch artist whose installations are often inspired by contemporary events.

De Jong’s material of choice: Styrofoam.

“His (Folkert’s) work was pretty hard to miss,” Tannenbaum says. “He had these three life-size figures — two Benjamin Franklins and one Lincoln. All three were wearing kilts and were painted in these very bright, garish colors. And of course they were all made of Styrofoam.”

Seeing de Jong’s work got Tannenbaum thinking about other artists who use Styrofoam. Tannenbaum, who admits to a longstanding fascination with Styrofoam (“It’s just such an amazing substance,” she says), was able to name two or three artists off the top of his head. Other suggestions came from artists, dealers and fellow curators.

Eventually, Tannenbaum says, she had enough for a show.

“Most of it was just word of mouth,” she says. “Unlike, say, contemporary glass or ceramics, there’s not a lot published about Styrofoam as an artistic medium.”

To prepare for the exhibit, Tannenbaum also immersed herself in the history of Styrofoam.

Originally developed by the Dow Chemical Co. in the early 1900s, Styrofoam boasts a unique mix of lightness, strength and buoyancy — attributes that make it ideal for maritime products such as floats, rafts and life preservers. It’s also cheap to produce, which helps explain its presence in everything from home insulation and packing and shipping materials to the ubiquitous Styrofoam coffee cup.

Though Dow still owns the rights to the name “Styrofoam,” other companies have jumped on the polystyrene bandwagon. Indeed, commercial versions of polystyrene are now available in a wide variety of shapes, grades and densities, ranging from pliable sheets to rigid blocks and panels. The color palette has also expanded with various manufacturers producing blue (Dow), pink (Owens Corning) and green (BASF) versions as well as white.

Meanwhile, one of the materials biggest strengths — its durability — has become one of its biggest liabilities. Last year, for example, San Francisco become the first American city to ban Styrofoam containers for fast food and take-out. Other cities are considering similar measures.

Asked about Styrofoam’s eco-unfriendly reputation, Tannenbaum notes that many of the show’s artists work with “found” materials — an art-world term that basically means “plucked from the trash.” She also notes that Styrofoam artworks, unlike Styrofoam coffee cups, rarely end up in landfills.

“Nobody in the show is saying “Please use more Styrofoam,” Tannenbaum says. “In fact, many of the artists are very clear about using only found or recycled Styrofoam.”

As an example, Tannenbaum points to the work of B. Wurtz, a New York artist who’s known for experimenting with unconventional materials. In 1986, Wurtz began taking photographs of the molded Styrofoam blocks that are used to protect stereos, computers and other electronic gear.

Shot in grainy black-and-white, with little sense of scale or context, Wurtz’s pictures suggest fantastic landscapes and cityscapes. In one, a circular opening that might have once held a computer stand or a stereo speaker becomes a kind of miniature amphitheater — a Styrofoam Stonehenge.

“In a sense, these photographs really encapsulate what the show is about,” says Tannenbaum. “To take something so simple — something that this artist probably found on the street or pulled out of somebody’s trash — and make it so wonderfully mysterious, that’s the essence of the show.”

Though it’s been around for nearly a century, Styrofoam first came to the fore as an artistic medium during the 1970s and early 1980s, when many artists experimented with industrial-grade processes and materials. Two of the show’s best known contributors — Richard Tuttle and Sol Lewitt — have roots in that era, although their different temperaments and working methods yield very different results.

Tuttle, for example, is known for using unconventional materials such as string, wire, cloth and cardboard. In Lonesome Cowboy Styrofoam #5, a series of rough-hewn sculptures from 1988, Tuttle shaped and painted pieces of Styrofoam insulation he’d found in an abandoned farmhouse in New Mexico. The results suggest king-size arrowheads, cutting blades and other Native-American artifacts.

Tannenbaum, who’s a fan of Tuttle’s simple-yet-allusive work, feels lucky to have his work in the show.

“I really didn’t think we’d get him,” she says of Tuttle, who will join several other artists from the show for a panel discussion on March 19. (The 6:45 p.m. event, to be held at the RISD Auditorium, will also feature Heide Fasnacht, Steve Keister, Bruce Pearson and B. Wurtz.)

LeWitt, meanwhile, will be represented by a pair of large-scale works from 1993 — Black Styrofoam on White Wall and White Styrofoam on Black Wall. Both consist of rigid Styrofoam panels that have been broken up and reassembled, creating a “crackle-like” effect. (Sadly, LeWitt himself won’t be able to see the exhibit. He died last April from complications related to cancer.)

Perhaps the show’s most striking piece is Fasnacht’s Exploding Airplane, a sculpture of an exploding jumbo jet that will hang from the ceiling of the Farago gallery. Created in 2000, a year before the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, the work still packs a chilling emotional punch.

“It’s incredibly powerful,” says Tannenbaum. “Even before 9/11, it was a very strong piece. Since then, it’s become even more potent.”

Many younger artists have also embraced Styrofoam, albeit with an awareness of the material’s environmental baggage. The show features several such contributors, including de Jong (represented by one of his kilt-wearing Lincoln sculptures) and Shirely Tse, a New York-based artist whose 2003 work, Do Cinderblocks Dream of Being Styrofoam, consists of a waist-high wall made of pink Styrofoam cinderblocks.

Does that mean Styrofoam will one day join the pantheon of artistic materials, alongside wood, stone and canvas?

“Maybe,” says Tannenbaum, “but don’t hold your breath.”

“Styrofoam” opens Friday at the RISD Museum, 224 Benefit St. in Providence. Hours: Tues.-Sun. 10-5 (and until 9 p.m. on Gallery Night). Admission: $8 adults, $5 seniors 62 and over, $3 students with I.D. and $2 ages 5-18. Contact: (401) 454-6500 or online at www.risd.edu/museum.cfm.