"After You’re Gone," an installation by glass artist Beth Lippman, is on display in the RISD Museum’s lower Farago Wing gallery. The installation was inspired by works in the museum’s collection of American furniture and decorative arts.

Just in case you missed it, there’s a terrific glass exhibit at the RISD Museum right now.

No, it’s not “Chihuly at RISD,” the dramatic if too-predictable installation created by glassmaking superstar Dale Chihuly for the museum’s new Chace Center galleries. Instead, it’s “After You’re Gone,” an equally striking installation by New York glass artist Beth Lipman.

Located on the first floor of the museum’s Farago Wing, Lipman’s show is everything Chihuly’s isn’t: cool where Chihuly’s is hot, understated where Chihuly’s is boisterous, brainy where Chihuly’s is sensuous and nearly color-free where Chihuly’s is steeped in color.

That’s not to say Lipman’s approach is any better than Chihuly’s. In fact, Lipman’s work can feel a little emotionally chilly (although chilliness plays an important role in “After You’re Gone,” which explores all-too-timely issues of fragility and decay in the midst of worldly success.)

Yet museum-goers will be doing themselves a disservice if they pass up “After You’re Gone” on their way to or from “Chihuly at RISD.” Lipman may not have Chihuly’s star power, but in terms of talent, intelligence and even theatrical flair she’s every bit his equal.

At the same time, it’s possible to walk right past “After You’re Gone” and never know it’s there. That’s because most of the show is hidden by a partition that separates the installation from the Farago Wing’s admissions desk. Blink at the wrong time and you’ll miss it.

The only clue that something interesting is lurking behind the wall is a small bowl filled with apples, oranges, grapes and other fruits. The bowl, which sits quietly on a recessed shelf facing the Farago Wing entrance, looks like a typical piece of museum décor, except for one thing — both the bowl and the fruit are made of clear, uncolored glass.

The result suggests a kind of icy still life — beautiful yet ghostly, a vision of earthly abundance drained of life and color.

There’s more of the same on the other side of the partition. The show’s centerpiece, for example, is an ornate dining table covered with what appears to be the remains of a lavish banquet. Plates filled with fruit, cheese, oysters and other delicacies are scattered here and there, as though tossed aside by fast-departing revelers.

In another sign of celebratory excess, the table is packed with glasses, bottles and decanters, several of which have been knocked over and broken. (Clearly, the guests at this party didn’t leave thirsty.)

Yet, as you might expect, this is no ordinary bacchanal. For one thing, there are the little off-kilter details Lipman likes to sneak into her installations. Here, they include a group of party-crashing garden snails and a pair of dead (or at least dead-looking) parrots.

Both add an extra layer of strangeness to a scene that already has plenty of it.

Then there’s the fact that everything on the table — cheese, snails, oysters, even the plush-looking tablecloth — is made of glass. The effect is similar to the bowl of fruit that stands guard outside the exhibit, only on a much larger scale. Indeed, it’s the kind of scene that most of us only encounter in dreams and fairy tales — an exotic feast set in a glittering palace of ice.

While the table is clearly the center of attention, “After You’re Gone” features several other striking pieces. They include an all-glass settee and a pair of glass picture frames of the sort you might have found in an upper-class Victorian drawing room. As a final touch, Lipman created “wallpaper” for the installation by pouring molten glass into diamond-shaped molds.

If some of these pieces look vaguely familiar, it may be because Lipman modeled them on artworks in the museum’s permanent collection. The settee, for example, is similar to an 18th-century settee in the museum’s Pendleton House wing. The table setting, meanwhile, was inspired by Old Master still lifes in the museum’s European paintings collection.

(According to a gallery note, Lipman spent several weeks at RISD earlier this year as a visiting artist. She also collaborated with students from the school’s glassmaking department on several of the pieces in “After You’re Gone.”)

Finally, there’s the challenge posed by the show’s enigmatic title.

On one level, “After You’re Gone” might simply refer to the status of all artworks — precious objects that continue to exist long after the people who created them move on or pass away. Then again, the phrase might be addressed to a wayward spouse or boyfriend. In that case, the installation’s undercurrents of emotional loss, fragility and withdrawal could refer the aftermath of a failed romance.

Given what’s happened over the past few weeks, however, it’s hard not to give “After You’re Gone” a broader interpretation. Indeed, what better way to sum up the current financial crisis than with a ghostly banquet table filled with expensive delicacies no one can eat?

“After You’re Gone: An Installation by Beth Lipman” continues through Jan. 18 at the RISD Museum, 224 Benefit Street, Providence. Hours: Tues.-Sun., 10-5. Admission: $10 adults, $7 seniors, $3 students with I.D., $2 youths 5-18. Contact: (401) 454-6500 or www.risdmuseum.org.

By the way, if you’re tired of watching the economy crash and burn, you might want to stop by Ken Takashi Horii’s show at the Chazan Gallery at Wheeler.

Horii, who teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design, isn’t dishing out investment advice. Instead, he uses Buddhist principles of balance and harmony to create drawings and other artworks that seek to bridge the gap between East and West, faith and reason.

In particular, Horii takes a familiar Western art form — the smudgy, mirror-image inkblots that are used in Rorschach tests — and treats them as though they were Buddhist-style religious images. One group of drawings, for example, is based on the Jatakamala, a 4th-century collection of Buddhist parables. Other drawings evoke the “Sacred Vision” paintings that are an important part of Tibetan art and that typically portray a pantheon of Buddhist saints and demons.

Several works incorporate multiple drawings and allow Horii to show off his skills as a sculptor. Of these, Mind and Matter, a large multi-part sculpture that looks a bit like giant sandal inlaid with more than a dozen drawings, is the most impressive.

So while Horii’s work can’t save your 401(k), its underlying message — that true happiness comes when mind, body and spirit are in balance — may just sooth your soul.

Through Sunday at the Chazan Gallery at Wheeler, Wheeler School, 228 Angell St., Providence. Hours: Tues.-Sat. noon-5 and Sun. 3-5. Contact: (401) 421-9230 or www.chazangallery.org.

bvansicl@projo.com