NEWPORT, R.I. – A famous architectural tour through 1883 Newport will be recreated and fortified with new research findings when Dr. Ronald J. Onorato presents "George Champlin Mason Jr.: Newport and the Colonial Revival Style," on Tuesday, Oct. 19 at 6:30 p.m. at Salve Regina University's Young Building, corner of Bellevue and Ruggles avenues.
Free and open to the public, Onorato's presentation will lead his audience on a virtual tour of the same Newport buildings where Mason Jr. led members of the American Institute of Architects in 1883.
Onorato will present new research connected to the colonial revival in Newport that explicates the role that Mason Jr. played in its creation. He will also establish Mason Jr.'s reputation in the profession between the 1880s and about 1920, bringing him out of the shadow of his more celebrated father, George Champlin Mason.
The talk is being presented by Salve Regina's department of art and the cultural and historic preservation program.
Onorato, professor of art and architectural history at the University of Rhode Island, is a nationally known expert on the architectural and sculptural heritage of Newport from the colonial period to the present. He is an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects, Rhode Island chapter.
He has held positions in a number of art museums including senior curator at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art in California and at the New York Cultural Center in Manhattan, and has been the recipient of many fellowships, including from the Wyeth Foundation, the Prince Foundation and the URI Humanities Center. He has also served as principal investigator on several projects from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Onorato holds a bachelor's degree in art history from Rutgers, and both a master's degree and doctorate from Brown University.
He also teaches several field courses every year on Newport architecture and other New England topics, with site visits ranging from graveyards and colonial townscapes to industrial sites, sculptural monuments and historical districts.
A member of the Honors faculty, he teaches a special art history based seminar every year for honors students.
For more information on this lecture, contact Catherine Zipf at (401) 341-3205 or Catherine.Zipf@salve.edu.