Image: Newport Art Museum
Printmaker Bill Jacklin has donated a large Charles Brand etching press to the Newport Art Museum School in Newport, Rhode Island, expanding the institution’s facilities for classical printmaking and larger-scale production. The press was delivered over the weekend, according to an announcement issued by the museum on August 26.
The Newport Art Museum said the new equipment will give students and artists additional creative possibilities in the studio. It will also support the production of larger works, extending the scale of projects possible through the Museum School’s printmaking programme. The institution described the press as a state-of-the-art addition to its educational facilities.
The gift forms part of the school’s wider programme of classes and workshops. The Coleman Center for Creative Studies offers adult instruction in acrylic painting, ceramics, watercolours and pastels, as well as teen pottery-wheel classes. Fall classes were scheduled to begin the week of September 14, with the museum reporting that several offerings were selling out.
The Museum School is located at 26 Liberty Street, separate from the Newport Art Museum’s main building at 76 Bellevue Avenue. The museum, founded in 1912, describes itself as one of the oldest continuously operating art museums and schools of its kind in the United States. Its collection comprises approximately 3,000 works across media including prints, drawings, watercolours, photographs, paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, installation works and textiles.
The addition of the press is particularly relevant to the museum’s concentration on works on paper and its continuing emphasis on education. The collection includes American and contemporary art dating from the eighteenth century to the present, while the school provides a setting in which students and working artists can develop practices through direct engagement with materials and equipment.
The museum’s current programme also includes several exhibitions at its Newport campus. ‘Sheila Isham: Between Worlds’, on view from July 11, 2026, through February 28, 2027, brings together more than 30 paintings and works on paper from 1968 to 2004. ‘Angel Otero: The Ocean Forgot Your Garden’ runs through January 10, 2027, and ‘Howard Gardiner Cushing: Rediscoveries’ is scheduled through December 31, 2027. The school’s new Charles Brand press will be available as part of the institution’s printmaking resources for students and artists.
