Installation view of Yu-Wen Wu’s Lanterns

These contemporary lanterns, created by artist Yu-Wen Wu for The Celestial City: Newport and China exhibition at Rosecliff (2023-24), have found an appropriate new home in the Chinese Tea House at Marble House.

Each lantern has a theme – Entrepreneurship, the Exclusion Act, Arrivals, Trade and Women’s Suffrage – illuminating the contributions of Chinese and Chinese American individuals to Newport and the U.S. more broadly. During the Gilded Age, more than 60 Chinese businesses operated in Newport, while Chinese immigration was banned by federal law in 1882, with race- and nationality-based quotas not eliminated until 1965. Chinese workers made significant contributions to the nation’s prosperity in the 19th century, particularly in the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. Newport merchants—including the Wetmores of Chateau-sur-Mer and the Kings of Kingscote—profited from trade with China in commodities such as tea, silk, and opium. Chinese American women, such as Mabel Ping-Hua Lee and Grace Yip Typond, played vital roles in the women’s suffrage movement and may have inspired Alva Belmont to build the Tea House, which she opened for a major suffrage conference in 1914.

To learn more about this fascinating exhibition, click here.