Canton Harbor Scene, attributed to Yeuqua (Chinese active 1850-1885), Courtesy of Preservation Society of Newport County
The Celestial City: Newport and China
Zoom Webinar, Tuesday, September 12 at 5pm EST
China and the American colonies and later the United States have enjoyed centuries of trade, much of it originating from Newport, Rhode Island spectacularly featured in Julian Fellowes HBO hit series, "The Gilded Age."
Join AWNY for a fascinating Zoom webinar in cooperation with the Preservation Society of Newport County about the just opened exhibition, The Celestial City: Newport and China, on view at Rosecliff, the recently restored Gilded Age Mansion and setting for the exhibition from September 1–February 11, 2024. Over a hundred works of art, paintings, sculpture, ceramics, and photographs and other treasures collected by Newport merchants and industrialists are exhibited. These are accompanied by photographs and stories from members of the less well-known early Chinese community of Newport and writings, portraits and family heirlooms of Chinese women suffragists who inspired American women’s rights leaders including Alma Vanderbilt Belmont of Marble House.
PANEL:
Dr. Nicole Williams, Curator of Collections at The Preservation Society of Newport County
Dr. Bing Huang, Assistant Professor of Art History at Providence College, Rhode Island
MODERATOR:
Lark Mason, Jr., founder of iGavel Auctions, Emeritus President of the Appraisers Association of America and former Chairman, Asia Week New York
To register, click here.
Participant’s Biographies:
Dr. Nicole Williams, the Curator of Collections at The Preservation Society of Newport County
Dr. Nicole Williams earned her BA from Harvard College and her PhD from Yale University in the History of Art with a specialization in American art. Her work as a scholar and curator focuses on the global contexts for nineteenth-century American art, women's histories, intersections between art and the law, and practices and theories of craft in an age of industry. Her research has been published in museum catalogues and scholarly journals, including Woman’s Art Journal, The Journal of Modern Craft, Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide, Photography and Culture, and Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art.
Dr. Bing Huang, Assistant Professor of Art History at Providence College, Rhode Island
Dr. Bing Huang earned her PhD from the History of Art and Architecture department at Harvard University. Her research interests are broad and interdisciplinary, encompassing the confluence of Chinese and European artistic influences, the intricacies of Han Dynasty tombs and architecture, Buddhist art, and the evolving landscape of media and advanced technologies, including Virtual Reality (VR) and AI generative art. Her essays have appeared in scholarly journals including Studies in Chinese Religions, Women's History Review, and Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering.
Lark Mason, Jr., Moderator
Lark Mason, Jr. founded the iGavel Auctions platform in 2003. Prior to that he served as Sotheby’s General Appraiser from 1979 until 1985, and as a Senior Vice President and specialist in Chinese art with Sotheby's Chinese Works of Art Department from 1985-2003. From 2000-2003 he concurrently was a Director of Online Auctions for Sothebys.com. He also served as a consulting curator at the Trammell and Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas, Texas from 2003-2009. As a generalist in American and European works of art and paintings, as well as an expert in the field of Chinese art, he has valued and advised many private collectors and institutions.
His eponymous Lark Mason Associates regularly hosts auctions on iGavel Auctions and has an established history of record sales of Chinese and other works of art and holds the record for the highest price achieved for any work of art in an online sale, for a painting sold in May 2014 that realized close to $4.2m. Mason is noted for his regular appearances on "The Antiques Road Show.”
