Newport Mansions’ “Unique and Different” Approach to Celebrating America’s 250th

Newport Mansions’ “Unique and Different” Approach to Celebrating America’s 250th

The Newport Mansions are celebrating America’s 250th with exhibitions and presentations, and this week, GoLocal spoke with The Preservation Society of Newport County Executive Director Trudy Coxe and Chief Curator Leslie Jones about what visitors can expect.

“It’s wild - it’s been a very busy summer,” said Coxe. ”I think overall, there is a lot of activity around the country this 250th year. But I think that the way we approached it is unique and different, and I think intriguing.”

According to Coxe, what that entails at Newport Mansions’ “Revolution Reimagined” is “looking at it from the perspective of 1776, then a room devoted to 1986, and then 1976 and 2026.”

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“The third room, 1976, is kind of the room of the decade of activism, when everything from Native Americans, indigenous people were rising up, along with African Americans, along with the environmental activism community, along with gay rights and women's rights. And then to me, the 2026 room encompasses modern sculptors and artists whose work reflects that,” said Coxe. “It’s a really great way of looking at 250 years through the eyes of many people.”

Other attractions Coxe highlighted include a historical matzo board in the 1776 room, noting that the Jewish community was established early in Newport.

"The board is huge," said Coxe. "The synagogue produced this matzo which was then distributed not only to its congregants, but also to people in need."

And then, says Coxe, there's a unique ice cream mold in the 1876 room to celebrate George Washington.

"It kind of looks like a cartoon, almost of pink and white stripes of ice cream in the form of George Washington, just to commemorate how important he was as the founding president of our country," said Coxe. "And I guess, interesting story, it was impossible to make blue ice cream [back] then."

 

 

Curating the Exhibit

Coxe said that “one of the best loans that has come in came from the St. Louis Museum of Art.”

“It’s a group of colonial captains in Surinam, and the thing that's unique about the painting is it includes two former governors from the State of Rhode Island, and it is almost like an 18th-century satirical commentary on the state of affairs, because so many of the individuals depicted in the painting by John Greenwood were consciously fighting for independence,” said Coxe.

According to Jones, who also serves as Newport Mansions’ Director of Museum Affairs, the exhibit has been three years in the making.

And even securing “Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam” was a coup in itself.

“Because it’s such a well-known painting, we were quite certain we would not get it this commemorative year,” said Jones. “So not only is it an incredibly well-known, documented, and famous work of art, the fact that we were able to get it in 2026 was a great thing.”

Learn more about the exhibits here: