The National Museum of American Illustration gives Newport one of its more distinctive house-museum visits. Instead of another room-by-room lesson in Gilded Age wealth, Vernon Court is filled with work by American illustrators such as Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish and N.C. Wyeth, the artists who shaped magazine covers, books and advertising in the early 20th century.
The building still matters: it is a grand Bellevue Avenue mansion with the polish Newport does so well. But the pleasure here is seeing popular art treated seriously, in rooms where colour, storytelling and period taste have as much pull as marble and chandeliers.