{"id":669927,"date":"2026-05-28T10:43:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T10:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/669927\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T10:43:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T10:43:17","slug":"delaware-museum-marks-america-250-with-contemporary-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/669927\/","title":{"rendered":"Delaware museum marks America 250 with contemporary art"},"content":{"rendered":"

What are journalists missing from the state of Delaware? What would you most like WHYY News to cover? Let us know.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re looking for an unconventional way to explore America\u2019s semiquincentennial, Rockwood Museum<\/a> near Wilmington might have just the exhibit for you.\n<\/p>\n

Red, white and blue bunting won\u2019t adorn the 19th-century Gothic Revival mansion. Don\u2019t expect a band to be playing patriotic tunes. There won\u2019t be a barbecue or fireworks. Certainly no parade around the lush 72-acre property.\n<\/p>\n

Instead, visitors to Rockwood\u2019s \u201cWe the People\u201d exhibit will see new and recent works from five area artists<\/a> among the heirloom portraits, ornate furnishings, porcelain, photographs and memorabilia collected by the upper-crust Shipley and Bringhurst families, who lived there for nearly a century.\n <\/p>\n

Through Labor Day, the contemporary works from a racially and culturally diverse group of artists have been placed \u201cin direct conversation\u201d with the permanent collections of the estate\u2019s original inhabitants, museum director Ryan Grover said.
\n\"insideNew art and old furnishings and household goods are on display in the \u201cWe the People\u201d exhibit. (Cris Barrish\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

Direct conversations, indeed<\/p>\n

Artist Alim Smith\u2019s large painting of a Black woman and child on white canvas, which he created using a pair of Nike Air Force 1 sneakers from a secondhand store instead of a brush, dominates the stone wall of the vestibule.
\n\"twoAlim Smith used a pair of old Nike sneakers as a paintbrush in these works. (Cris Barrish\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

On the grand stairwell, three wildly colorful self-portraits by Wilmington-area native Lauren Peters contrast with three traditional 19th-century portraits.\n<\/p>\n

The one American flag in the exhibit appears in a painting, where its stars and stripes form a Ku Klux Klan hood that a bystander is pulling off.
\n\"aThe only American flag in the exhibit is\u00a0a Ku Klux Klan mask that is being pulled off in a work by Mikayel Thurin, a Haitian American mixed media and textile artist. (Courtesy of Rockwood Museum)\n<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s how Grover wanted it, to have artists \u2014 three Black, one Chinese American and one white \u2014 present creations that stand in stark juxtaposition to the work displayed by the families who lived at Rockwood, an English-themed country estate that was built in the 1850s and is also celebrating its 50th anniversary as a museum.\n<\/p>\n

Grover also wanted to showcase work that presents other views of America\u2019s past, present and future on the nation\u2019s 250th anniversary<\/a>. He noted that the mansion had no Black, Asian or Latino residents, but that some, which the museum refers to as \u201cservants,\u201d worked for the owners in the kitchen, or as maids or groundskeepers.
\n\"picturesThe exhibit aims to have viewers think of the \u201cservants\u201d who cooked, cleaned and maintained grounds for the upper-crust British residents. (Cris Barrish\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe contemporary artists are bridges for us new audiences, to audiences of today,\u201d Grover told WHYY News during a tour. \u201cBut on a level beneath the cover, we\u2019re also trying to find new ways to interpret these old materials. We want to have new stories. We\u2019re looking for new perspectives.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What are journalists missing from the state of Delaware? What would you most like WHYY News to cover?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88,55053,111009],"class_list":["post-669927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-first-state-focus","tag-philadelphia-250"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}