The Celestial City: Newport and China

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“The Celestial City” explores China’s deep influence on Newport from the 18th century through the Gilded Age. The extraordinary objects on display include more than 100 works from the Preservation Society’s collection and other institutions in a range of media, from paintings, sculptures, prints and photographs to fashion, ceramics, lacquerwares and lanterns.

Highlights include treasures of Chinese art collected by Newport merchants and industrialists; photographs and stories from Newport’s early Chinese community; and the writings, portraits and family heirlooms of heroic Chinese women suffragists. Contemporary artworks by Yu-Wen Wu and Jennifer Ling Datchuk illuminate Chinese contributions to Newport as well as hidden connections between the Newport mansions and the Chinese-American experience.

Exhibition is included with admission to Rosecliff, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily.

Age of the Machine: The Fight to Reinvent Democracy in the Gilded Age

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Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer T.J. Stiles will discuss the political battles of the Gilded Age, a time of rampant political corruption and heavy-handed corporate intervention in elections. It was also a time when reformers ignited a reinvention of American democracy, changing how people voted, why people voted and how government worked.