The Preservation Society of Newport County will hold its annual Newport Symposium on Thursday, Nov. 5, and Friday, Nov. 6, at Rosecliff and Marble House, under the theme “What Makes It American.”
The two-day program of lectures and study tours runs from 8:30 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. each day and examines the origins and legacy of art, architecture, landscape and design in the United States, according to the Preservation Society. Founded in 1993, the symposium draws fine and decorative arts experts and enthusiasts from across the country.
Several sessions turn directly on Newport.
Author Justin Martin, who wrote “Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted,” will sketch Olmsted’s career — sailor, farmer, journalist and abolitionist before he became a landscape architect — and cover Central Park and Boston’s Emerald Necklace with particular attention to his work in Newport.
Carpenter and author Gary Katz will trace American entablatures beginning with the French Renaissance cornice in the Grand Salon at Marble House, then move through the Isaac Bell House, Kingscote and the William Watts Sherman House before leaping to the Gamble House in California and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.
Thomas Lloyd, president of the Gerard B. Lambert Foundation and grandson of Rachel “Bunny” Lambert Mellon, will appear with Rachel A. Heslop of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation to discuss how Mellon — best known for designing President John F. Kennedy’s Rose Garden — built a distinctly American garden language, and why that story resonates in a city shaped by its dialogue with Europe. Heslop was part of the project team behind the 2020 renewal of the White House Rose Garden.
Thomas Jayne of Jayne Design Studio will appear in conversation with Leslie B. Jones, the Preservation Society’s director of museum affairs and chief curator.
The keynote comes from Robyn Asleson, curator of prints and drawings at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, on American portraiture and national identity.
Other speakers include fashion historian Raissa Bretaña of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, author of “Fashion of the Gilded Age,” who will trace the origins of American style to the Gilded Age; K.L.H. Wells, associate professor of American art and architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, on Colonial Revival design and the making of an American identity; and Christopher Young, vice president and creative director for patrimony at Tiffany & Co., on how the firm shaped an American expression of luxury in the late 19th century.
Tickets are available at NewportMansions.org.
