Friends of Newport Museum and Art Gallery

Sylvia Mason writes about her visit to Newport Museum in 1982 We were visiting in May 1982 when an Argus photographer asked me if he could take a photo of my little daughter with the newly acquired Newport Doll. After that we always looked out for it. Now I visit with grandchildren but haven’t seen it for ages. I hope it’s OK. If only the photo had been in colour! When lock down is over we will ask if it can be put back on display.  Christina Mitchell writes about the ideas behind her creation of the Newport Doll. 'This was commissioned on the theme of Newport and it was the aim in the 1970s for Newport Art Gallery to commission a work of art on that theme every year. She was born in 1943 and came to Wales in 1974. Christina Mitchell states,  Newport Doll was conceived as a figurative three dimensional painting about the city of Newport.  The moving image at the centre of the piece is the Transporter bridge, probably the most iconic monume...

What happened to the Roman mosaics in the old Dock Street Museum? by Oliver Blackmore Newport’s old Dock Street Museum displayed two fine Roman mosaics from Caerwent. The black and white photograph below shows them grandly flanking the museum stairway. The Dock Street Museum was demolished in 1967. However, many Newportonians still remember the mosaics from their childhood. One such person recently asked what had happened to the mosaics? This presented the ideal opportunity to tell their story. The Caerwent mosaics displayed on the stairs of the Dock Street Museum c. 1906 . Both mosaics date to the third century AD – often called the ‘golden age of mosaics’ in Britain. Discovered in a Roman house in Caerwent, the mosaics are from and associated with, a room called a ‘triclinium’. A triclinium (named after the Greek ‘triklinion’) was a formal oblong-shaped dining room, composed of three (‘tri’) couches (‘ klinon’). Triclinia were where middle and upper class...