Parrish Art Museum
Encyclopedia
The Parrish Art Museum is the oldest cultural institution on the East End of Long Island
, uniquely situated within one of the most concentrated creative communities in the United States. For more than a century, the Museum has been committed to serving as an essential resource by providing access to exceptional works of art not otherwise available to the community, enriching the lives of East End residents as well as the many national and international visitors to the region.
The Parrish is devoted to the collection, preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of American Art
with a particular emphasis on the art and artists of the East End. The Museum celebrates the region’s enduring legacy as a vibrant art colony, telling the story of our area, our “sense of place,” and its national —even global— impact on the world of art.
The Parrish Art Museum, located in Southampton, New York
, was founded in 1897. It has grown into a major art museum with a permanent collection of more than 2,600 works of art from the nineteenth century to the present, including works by such contemporary painters and sculptors such as John Chamberlain, Chuck Close
, Eric Fischl
, April Gornik
, Donald Sultan
, Elizabeth Peyton
, as well as by masters Dan Flavin
, Roy Lichtenstein
, Jackson Pollock
, Lee Krasner
, and Willem de Kooning
. The Parrish houses among the world’s most important collections of works by the preeminent American Impressionist William Merritt Chase
and by the groundbreaking post-war American realist painter Fairfield Porter
.
The museum's current director is Terrie Sultan
, who has written several publications related to noted artists such as Chuck Close
, Kerry James Marshall
, artist and musician Terry Allen, and Louise Bourgeois
.
painting and copies of classical and Renaissance sculpture. Designed by noted architect Grosvenor Atterbury
and constructed in 1897, the Museum was incorporated the following year as the Art Museum of Southampton.
The original building was expanded twice, in 1902 and 1913. After his death in 1932, the collection and building were bequeathed to the Village of Southampton but, without Parrish’s guiding vision, the Museum ceased to thrive. It wasn’t until the 1950s, under the direction of the newly elected president of the board of trustees, Mrs. Robert M. Littlejohn, that the Museum enjoyed its own renaissance. Recognizing the importance of this country’s contribution to the arts, Mrs. Littlejohn launched a campaign to strengthen the Museum’s holdings of American art, with special attention to artists associated with eastern Long Island such as Thomas Moran
, Childe Hassam
, and Thomas Doughty
. Upon her death, the Museum became the beneficiary of more than 300 paintings, drawings, and watercolors from her personal collection, which included work by Martin Johnson Heade
, Asher B. Durand, John H. Twachtman, John Sloan, and a remarkable collection of thirty-one paintings by American Impressionist William Merritt Chase
.
In 1981, further depth was added to the collection when nearly 200 works of art by the prominent American painter, critic, and longtime Southampton resident Fairfield Porter
(1907-1975) were donated by his wife Anne and by the artist’s estate. Building from the strength of these collections, the Museum now traces the evolution of American art from its roots in an emerging landscape tradition through the liberating influences of European modernism and the development of the New York School
to the stylistic diversity of contemporary art, focusing its exhibitions and acquisitions on American painting of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with special attention to artists who have lived and worked on Long Island’s East End and their influence on the national and international art world.
In 2005 the Museum purchased a 14 acres (56,656 m²) site in Water Mill, New York, 2.3 miles (3.7 km) from the original location on Jobs Lane, Southampton. Pritzker Prize
winning architects Herzog & de Meuron
were engaged to develop a new building for the site. From the beginning, the architects were inspired by the many artists’ studios they visited on the East End, the area’s distinctive light, and the landscape. The result is a long, low structure, reflecting the indigenous architecture of the region and maintaining, through floor-to-ceiling windows affording views outside, the connection of the landscape to the art and artists of the region. North facing skylights will allow the galleries to be illuminated by the natural and ever changing light cited as a source of inspiration by so many artists. Ground for the new building was officially broken on July 19, 2010. Construction is expected to take eighteen months, with the new facility opening in 2012.
(over 40 paintings and works on paper) and an extensive archive, including over 1000 photographs relating to the life and work of the artist, in particular, family photographs of summers spent here on the East End.
As portraitist and landscape painter, and as a teacher of art, Chase was unequalled in his day and it was not surprising that when a group of Southampton boosters had the idea of improving the summer resort by establishing an art school, the Shinnecock Hills
Summer School of Art, they chose the prominent Mr. Chase to be the first teacher.
The Museum’s collection features paintings from all periods of his work, including the early Still Life with Fruit (1871); works from the famous New York park scenes series, notably Park in Brooklyn (ca. 1887); major studio paintings from the 1880s, such as The Blue Kimono (ca. 1888); and of course, the paintings made during those summers in the Shinnecock Hills, including The Bayberry Bush (ca. 1895).
was one of the most important American realist painters from 1949 until his death in 1975. Not coincidentally, these were the years when Porter lived in Southampton, New York
, and in 1979 his estate recognized the bond between the artist and the Museum by donating some 250 works to the Parrish collection.
Porter was both a gifted painter and an accomplished writer who produced some of the most lucid art criticism and commentary of the time, notably his reviews for the magazine Art News. He insisted that he painted what he saw rather than what he might assume to be there. Porter painted what he was familiar with—his family and friends and the places he lived and visited, including Southampton, New York
and a family-owned island off the coast of Maine
where he had summered since childhood.
Writing about the intimate interior paintings of the French artists Vuillard and Bonnard
, Porter found that in their work that recorded the ordinary "…the extraordinary is everywhere." An artist who steadfastly maintained a figurative vision, he knew and admired many Abstract Expressionist artists on the East End, especially Willem de Kooning
. Porter once wrote: "The realist thinks he knows ahead of time what reality is, and the abstract artist what art is, but it is in its formality that realist art excels, and the best abstract art communicates an overwhelming sense of reality."
donated to the Parrish more than two dozen paintings and watercolors, among them works by Ralph Blakelock
, James A. M. Whistler, William Glackens
, and Arthur B. Davies
. Works by William Sidney Mount
, Winslow Homer
, Ernest Lawson
, and Charles Burchfield were given to the Museum by
Clark a year later. In 1961, in addition to artists mentioned previously, Mrs. Littlejohn bequeathed to the Parrish works by John Frederick Kensett
, Otis Bullard, E. L. Henry, George Luks
, and Everett Shinn
, among others.
Since the Porter bequest of 1975, the Parrish has increasingly focused on American painting of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with a special emphasis on artists who have maintained studios on the East End of Long Island since the 1950s. Among those represented in the collection are Jane Freilicher, Larry Rivers
, James Brooks
, Alfonso Ossorio, Esteban Vicente
, Jane Wilson, and Robert Dash, to name just a few. More recent East End arrivals whose work the Museum holds are Chuck Close
, Joan Snyder
, Joe Zucker, Alice Aycock
, Lynda Benglis
, April Gornik
, Keith Sonnier
, Mary Heilmann, Malcolm Morley
, and many more. At the same time the Museum continues to strengthen its earlier twentieth-century holdings.
The collection also includes a substantial number of prints and drawings, among them works by George Bellows
, Marsden Hartley
, Larry Rivers
, Helen Frankenthaler
, and Robert Rauschenberg
. In 1982 Paul F. Walter donated drawings by many Minimalist painters and sculptors, including Barry Le Va, Dorothea Rockburne
, Mel Bochner
, and Jennifer Bartlett
. Robert Dunnigan gave the Museum more than 500 etchings in 1976, with prints by many of the American artists who participated in the “painter-etcher” movement of the late nineteenth century. Also in the Museum’s print collection are nearly 200 Japanese woodblock prints presented as part of the Littlejohn bequest. Dating from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they provide a contrast to their American counterparts from the same period.
: Raw—The Creative Process of an American Master and American Landscapes: Treasures from the Parrish Art Museum, are drawn from the permanent collection, the majority are exhibitions organized by Parrish curators exploring themes and concepts in art. Recent solo shows have included Alex Katz
: Seeing, Drawing, Making; Rackstraw Downes
: Onsite Paintings, 1972-2008; Jean Luc Mylayne; Alan Shields: Stirring the Waters; Roy Lichtenstein
: American Indian Encounters; and Jack Youngerman
: Folding Screen Paintings. Notable among recent group exhibitions are Encouraging American Genius: Master Paintings from the Corcoran Gallery of Art
; All the More Real; Sand: Memory, Meaning, and Metaphor; Modern Photographs: The Machine, the Body, and the City; and Damaged Romanticism: A Mirror of Modern Emotion.
The Parrish also has a long tradition of juried exhibitions. For most of the Museum’s history, these exhibitions were open to all artists, who were selected by a panel of three judges. In 2008, in recognition of the Museum’s important mission of celebrating the art of the East End, the format changed. Submissions were limited to artists from eastern Long Island, whose digital entries were reviewed by nine established artists from the region. Each juror gradually narrowed his or her choices until a single selection was made. The nine chosen artists exhibited their work in tandem with the artists who selected them. This format not only focused on the artists of the region but also encouraged interaction among artists at different points in their careers. Artists Choose Artists of the East End will be a recurring program.
When the Parrish moves to its Water Mill location in 2012, it will have 4500 square feet (418.1 m²) of exhibition space dedicated to temporary exhibitions and 7500 square feet (696.8 m²) for display of the permanent collection. Future shows (2011 and 2012) will focus on Esteban Vicente
, Juliao Sarmento, Dorothea Rockburne
, Alice Aycock
, and Jennifer Bartlett
.
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
, uniquely situated within one of the most concentrated creative communities in the United States. For more than a century, the Museum has been committed to serving as an essential resource by providing access to exceptional works of art not otherwise available to the community, enriching the lives of East End residents as well as the many national and international visitors to the region.
The Parrish is devoted to the collection, preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of American Art
American Art
American Art is the debut album of the band Weatherbox. It was released on May 8, 2007 on Doghouse Records. The album received critical acclaim from several sources including underground music distribution company Smartpunk, who lauded the band's style:...
with a particular emphasis on the art and artists of the East End. The Museum celebrates the region’s enduring legacy as a vibrant art colony, telling the story of our area, our “sense of place,” and its national —even global— impact on the world of art.
The Parrish Art Museum, located in Southampton, New York
Southampton (village), New York
Southampton is a village in Suffolk County, New York, USA. The village is named after the Earl of Southampton. The Village of Southampton is in the southeast part of the county in the Town of Southampton...
, was founded in 1897. It has grown into a major art museum with a permanent collection of more than 2,600 works of art from the nineteenth century to the present, including works by such contemporary painters and sculptors such as John Chamberlain, Chuck Close
Chuck Close
Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...
, Eric Fischl
Eric Fischl
Eric Fischl is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker.-Early life:Fischl was born in New York City and grew up on suburban Long Island; his family moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1967...
, April Gornik
April Gornik
April Gornik is an American artist, known for her American landscape paintings.Her work Storm and Fires is included into the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, as well as in many other national museums and private collections.In 2007, The Smithsonian Art Collectors Program...
, Donald Sultan
Donald Sultan
Donald Sultan is an American artist, known for large-scale still life paintings executed with bold contrasts of bright color and deep black forms, tight, nearly abstract compositions, and unorthodox media....
, Elizabeth Peyton
Elizabeth Peyton
Elizabeth Joy Peyton is an American painter who rose to popularity in the mid-1990s. She is a contemporary artist best known for stylized and idealized portraits of her close friends and boyfriends, pop celebrities, and European monarchy...
, as well as by masters Dan Flavin
Dan Flavin
Dan Flavin was an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures.-Early life and career:...
, Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement...
, Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
, Lee Krasner
Lee Krasner
Lee Krasner was an influential abstract expressionist painter in the second half of the 20th century. On October 25, 1945, she married artist Jackson Pollock, who was also influential in the Abstract Expressionism movement....
, and Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....
. The Parrish houses among the world’s most important collections of works by the preeminent American Impressionist William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase was an American painter known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons The New School for Design.- Early life and training :He was born in Williamsburg , Indiana, to the family...
and by the groundbreaking post-war American realist painter Fairfield Porter
Fairfield Porter
Fairfield Porter was an American painter and art critic. He was the brother of photographer Eliot Porter and the brother-in-law of federal Reclamation Commissioner Michael W. Straus....
.
The museum's current director is Terrie Sultan
Terrie Sultan (curator)
Terrie Sultan was appointed Director of the Parrish Art Museum in January 2008. She has more than twenty-five years of experience as a museum professional, having served in senior positions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the...
, who has written several publications related to noted artists such as Chuck Close
Chuck Close
Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...
, Kerry James Marshall
Kerry James Marshall
Kerry James Marshall is an artist born in Birmingham, Alabama. He grew up in South Central Los Angeles and now lives in Chicago where he previously taught at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago...
, artist and musician Terry Allen, and Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois
Louise Joséphine Bourgeois , was a renowned French-American artist and sculptor, best known for her contributions to both modern and contemporary art, and for her spider structures, titled Maman, which resulted in her being nicknamed the Spiderwoman...
.
History
The Museum was founded in 1897 by Samuel Longstreth Parrish, a successful attorney who began collecting art in the early 1880s and who established the museum to house his collection of Italian RenaissanceItalian Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...
painting and copies of classical and Renaissance sculpture. Designed by noted architect Grosvenor Atterbury
Grosvenor Atterbury
Grosvenor Atterbury was an American architect, urban planner and writer. He studied at Yale University and then travelled in Europe. He studied architecture at Columbia University and worked in the offices of McKim, Mead & White. Much of Atterbury’s early work consisted of weekend houses for...
and constructed in 1897, the Museum was incorporated the following year as the Art Museum of Southampton.
The original building was expanded twice, in 1902 and 1913. After his death in 1932, the collection and building were bequeathed to the Village of Southampton but, without Parrish’s guiding vision, the Museum ceased to thrive. It wasn’t until the 1950s, under the direction of the newly elected president of the board of trustees, Mrs. Robert M. Littlejohn, that the Museum enjoyed its own renaissance. Recognizing the importance of this country’s contribution to the arts, Mrs. Littlejohn launched a campaign to strengthen the Museum’s holdings of American art, with special attention to artists associated with eastern Long Island such as Thomas Moran
Thomas Moran
Thomas Moran from Bolton, England was an American painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains. Moran and his family took residence in New York where he obtained work as an artist...
, Childe Hassam
Childe Hassam
Frederick Childe Hassam was a prolific American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was instrumental in promulgating Impressionism to American collectors, dealers, and museums...
, and Thomas Doughty
Thomas Doughty (artist)
Thomas Doughty was an American artist of the Hudson River School.Born in Philadelphia, Thomas Doughty was the first American artist to work exclusively as a landscapist and was successful both for his skill and the fact that Americans were turning their interest to landscape...
. Upon her death, the Museum became the beneficiary of more than 300 paintings, drawings, and watercolors from her personal collection, which included work by Martin Johnson Heade
Martin Johnson Heade
Martin Johnson Heade was a prolific American painter known for his salt marsh landscapes, seascapes, portraits of tropical birds, and still lifes...
, Asher B. Durand, John H. Twachtman, John Sloan, and a remarkable collection of thirty-one paintings by American Impressionist William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase was an American painter known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons The New School for Design.- Early life and training :He was born in Williamsburg , Indiana, to the family...
.
In 1981, further depth was added to the collection when nearly 200 works of art by the prominent American painter, critic, and longtime Southampton resident Fairfield Porter
Fairfield Porter
Fairfield Porter was an American painter and art critic. He was the brother of photographer Eliot Porter and the brother-in-law of federal Reclamation Commissioner Michael W. Straus....
(1907-1975) were donated by his wife Anne and by the artist’s estate. Building from the strength of these collections, the Museum now traces the evolution of American art from its roots in an emerging landscape tradition through the liberating influences of European modernism and the development of the New York School
New York School
The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City...
to the stylistic diversity of contemporary art, focusing its exhibitions and acquisitions on American painting of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with special attention to artists who have lived and worked on Long Island’s East End and their influence on the national and international art world.
In 2005 the Museum purchased a 14 acres (56,656 m²) site in Water Mill, New York, 2.3 miles (3.7 km) from the original location on Jobs Lane, Southampton. Pritzker Prize
Pritzker Prize
The Pritzker Architecture Prize is awarded annually by the Hyatt Foundation to honour "a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built...
winning architects Herzog & de Meuron
Herzog & de Meuron
Herzog & de Meuron Architekten, BSA/SIA/ETH is a Swiss architecture firm, founded and headquartered in Basel, Switzerland in 1978. The careers of founders and senior partners Jacques Herzog , and Pierre de Meuron , closely paralleled one another, with both attending the Swiss Federal Institute of...
were engaged to develop a new building for the site. From the beginning, the architects were inspired by the many artists’ studios they visited on the East End, the area’s distinctive light, and the landscape. The result is a long, low structure, reflecting the indigenous architecture of the region and maintaining, through floor-to-ceiling windows affording views outside, the connection of the landscape to the art and artists of the region. North facing skylights will allow the galleries to be illuminated by the natural and ever changing light cited as a source of inspiration by so many artists. Ground for the new building was officially broken on July 19, 2010. Construction is expected to take eighteen months, with the new facility opening in 2012.
The William Merritt Chase Collection and Archives
The Parrish holds the largest public collection of William Merritt ChaseWilliam Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase was an American painter known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons The New School for Design.- Early life and training :He was born in Williamsburg , Indiana, to the family...
(over 40 paintings and works on paper) and an extensive archive, including over 1000 photographs relating to the life and work of the artist, in particular, family photographs of summers spent here on the East End.
As portraitist and landscape painter, and as a teacher of art, Chase was unequalled in his day and it was not surprising that when a group of Southampton boosters had the idea of improving the summer resort by establishing an art school, the Shinnecock Hills
Shinnecock Hills, New York
Shinnecock Hills is a hamlet in Suffolk County, New York, United States. The population was 1,749 at the 2000 census. It is the home of a leading golf club, Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. This is the highest point on Long Island's east end. At its highest point it is the only place on Long Island,...
Summer School of Art, they chose the prominent Mr. Chase to be the first teacher.
The Museum’s collection features paintings from all periods of his work, including the early Still Life with Fruit (1871); works from the famous New York park scenes series, notably Park in Brooklyn (ca. 1887); major studio paintings from the 1880s, such as The Blue Kimono (ca. 1888); and of course, the paintings made during those summers in the Shinnecock Hills, including The Bayberry Bush (ca. 1895).
The Fairfield Porter Collection and Archives
Fairfield PorterFairfield Porter
Fairfield Porter was an American painter and art critic. He was the brother of photographer Eliot Porter and the brother-in-law of federal Reclamation Commissioner Michael W. Straus....
was one of the most important American realist painters from 1949 until his death in 1975. Not coincidentally, these were the years when Porter lived in Southampton, New York
Southampton (village), New York
Southampton is a village in Suffolk County, New York, USA. The village is named after the Earl of Southampton. The Village of Southampton is in the southeast part of the county in the Town of Southampton...
, and in 1979 his estate recognized the bond between the artist and the Museum by donating some 250 works to the Parrish collection.
Porter was both a gifted painter and an accomplished writer who produced some of the most lucid art criticism and commentary of the time, notably his reviews for the magazine Art News. He insisted that he painted what he saw rather than what he might assume to be there. Porter painted what he was familiar with—his family and friends and the places he lived and visited, including Southampton, New York
Southampton (village), New York
Southampton is a village in Suffolk County, New York, USA. The village is named after the Earl of Southampton. The Village of Southampton is in the southeast part of the county in the Town of Southampton...
and a family-owned island off the coast of Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
where he had summered since childhood.
Writing about the intimate interior paintings of the French artists Vuillard and Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of Les Nabis.-Biography:...
, Porter found that in their work that recorded the ordinary "…the extraordinary is everywhere." An artist who steadfastly maintained a figurative vision, he knew and admired many Abstract Expressionist artists on the East End, especially Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....
. Porter once wrote: "The realist thinks he knows ahead of time what reality is, and the abstract artist what art is, but it is in its formality that realist art excels, and the best abstract art communicates an overwhelming sense of reality."
The Collection
While the Chase and Porter collections are cornerstones of the Museum’s holdings, the permanent collection is wide-ranging. In 1958, Alfred Corning ClarkAlfred Corning Clark
-Biography:He was born on November 14, 1844 to Edward Clark, a founder of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. He married and had as his children: Edward Severin Clark, Robert Sterling Clark, Frederick Ambrose Clark and Stephen Carlton Clark, Sr....
donated to the Parrish more than two dozen paintings and watercolors, among them works by Ralph Blakelock
Ralph Albert Blakelock
Ralph Albert Blakelock was a romanticist painter from the United States.-Biography:Ralph Blakelock was born in New York City on October 15, 1847. His father was a successful physician. Blakelock initially set out to follow in his footsteps, and in 1864 began studies at the Free Academy of the...
, James A. M. Whistler, William Glackens
William Glackens
William James Glackens was an American realist painter.Glackens studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and later moved to New York City, where he co-founded what came to be called the Ashcan School art movement...
, and Arthur B. Davies
Arthur B. Davies
Arthur Bowen Davies was an avant-garde American artist and patron.-Biography:He was born in Utica, New York and studied at the Chicago Academy of Design from 1879 to 1882...
. Works by William Sidney Mount
William Sidney Mount
William Sidney Mount was an American genre painter and contemporary of the Hudson River School.-Biography:...
, Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art....
, Ernest Lawson
Ernest Lawson
Ernest Lawson was a Canadian-American painter and a member of The Eight, a group of artists which included the group's leaders Robert Henri, Everett Shinn, John Sloan, Arthur B. Davies, Maurice Prendergast, George Luks, and William J. Glackens...
, and Charles Burchfield were given to the Museum by
Clark a year later. In 1961, in addition to artists mentioned previously, Mrs. Littlejohn bequeathed to the Parrish works by John Frederick Kensett
John Frederick Kensett
John Frederick Kensett was an American artist and engraver. He attended school at Cheshire Academy, and studied engraving with his immigrant father, Thomas Kensett, and later with his uncle, Alfred Dagget...
, Otis Bullard, E. L. Henry, George Luks
George Luks
George Benjamin Luks, was an American realist artist and illustrator. His vigorously painted genre paintings of urban subjects are examples of the Ashcan school in American art.-Early life:...
, and Everett Shinn
Everett Shinn
Everett Shinn was an American realist painter and member of the Ashcan School, also known as 'the Eight.' He was the youngest member of the group of modernist painters who explored the depiction of real life...
, among others.
Since the Porter bequest of 1975, the Parrish has increasingly focused on American painting of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with a special emphasis on artists who have maintained studios on the East End of Long Island since the 1950s. Among those represented in the collection are Jane Freilicher, Larry Rivers
Larry Rivers
Larry Rivers was an American artist, musician, filmmaker and occasional actor. Rivers resided and maintained studios in New York City, Southampton, New York and Zihuatanejo, Mexico.-Biography:...
, James Brooks
James Brooks (painter)
James Brooks was an American muralist, abstract painter and winner of the Logan Medal of the Arts. Brooks was a friend of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner on Eastern Long Island. In 1947 he married artist Charlotte Park...
, Alfonso Ossorio, Esteban Vicente
Esteban Vicente
Esteban Vicente Pérez , was an American painter born in Turégano, Spain. He was one of the first generation of New York School abstract expressionists.-Early life:...
, Jane Wilson, and Robert Dash, to name just a few. More recent East End arrivals whose work the Museum holds are Chuck Close
Chuck Close
Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...
, Joan Snyder
Joan Snyder
Joan Snyder is an American painter from New York. She is a MacArthur Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow. Her paintings have been exhibited at several museums, including the de Saisset Museum and the Jewish Museum.-Painting styles:...
, Joe Zucker, Alice Aycock
Alice Aycock
-Biography:Aycock studied at Douglass College in New Brunswick, New Jersey, graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in 1968. She then went to New York City where she studied for her masters at Hunter College, and where she was taught and supervised by Robert Morris; she graduated in 1971...
, Lynda Benglis
Lynda Benglis
Lynda Benglis is an American sculptor known for her wax paintings and poured latex sculptures. After earning a BFA from Newcomb College in 1964, Benglis moved to New York, where she lives and works today...
, April Gornik
April Gornik
April Gornik is an American artist, known for her American landscape paintings.Her work Storm and Fires is included into the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, as well as in many other national museums and private collections.In 2007, The Smithsonian Art Collectors Program...
, Keith Sonnier
Keith Sonnier
Keith Sonnier is a Postminimalist, performance, video and light artist. Sonnier was one of the first artists to use light in sculpture in the 1960s, and has been one of the most successful with this technique...
, Mary Heilmann, Malcolm Morley
Malcolm Morley
Malcolm Morley is an English artist now living in the United States. He is best known as a photorealist.-Early life:Morley was born in north London. He had a troubled childhood, and did not discover art until serving a three-year stint in Wormwood Scrubs prison...
, and many more. At the same time the Museum continues to strengthen its earlier twentieth-century holdings.
The collection also includes a substantial number of prints and drawings, among them works by George Bellows
George Bellows
George Wesley Bellows was an American realist painter, known for his bold depictions of urban life in New York City, becoming, according to the Columbus Museum of Art, "the most acclaimed American artist of his generation".-Youth:Bellows was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio...
, Marsden Hartley
Marsden Hartley
Marsden Hartley was an American Modernist painter, poet, and essayist.-Early life and education:Hartley was born in Lewiston, Maine, where his English parents had settled. He was the youngest of nine children. His mother died when he was eight, and his father remarried four years later to Martha...
, Larry Rivers
Larry Rivers
Larry Rivers was an American artist, musician, filmmaker and occasional actor. Rivers resided and maintained studios in New York City, Southampton, New York and Zihuatanejo, Mexico.-Biography:...
, Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler is an American abstract expressionist painter. She is a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work in six decades she has spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work...
, and Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...
. In 1982 Paul F. Walter donated drawings by many Minimalist painters and sculptors, including Barry Le Va, Dorothea Rockburne
Dorothea Rockburne
Dorothea Rockburne is an abstract painter drawing inspiration primarily from her deep interest in mathematics and astronomy. In 1950 she moved to the United States to attend Black Mountain College, where she studied with mathematician Max Dehn, a lifelong influence on her work...
, Mel Bochner
Mel Bochner
Mel Bochner is an American conceptual artist. Mr. Bochner received his BFA in 1962 and honorary Doctor of Fine Arts in 2005 from the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University...
, and Jennifer Bartlett
Jennifer Bartlett
Jennifer Losch Bartlett is an American artist. She is best-known for paintings combining abstract and representational styles.-Education:...
. Robert Dunnigan gave the Museum more than 500 etchings in 1976, with prints by many of the American artists who participated in the “painter-etcher” movement of the late nineteenth century. Also in the Museum’s print collection are nearly 200 Japanese woodblock prints presented as part of the Littlejohn bequest. Dating from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they provide a contrast to their American counterparts from the same period.
Exhibitions
The Museum schedules four or five exhibitions per year. While some recent shows, such as Fairfield PorterFairfield Porter
Fairfield Porter was an American painter and art critic. He was the brother of photographer Eliot Porter and the brother-in-law of federal Reclamation Commissioner Michael W. Straus....
: Raw—The Creative Process of an American Master and American Landscapes: Treasures from the Parrish Art Museum, are drawn from the permanent collection, the majority are exhibitions organized by Parrish curators exploring themes and concepts in art. Recent solo shows have included Alex Katz
Alex Katz
Alex Katz is an American figurative artist associated with the Pop art movement. In particular, he is known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints and is represented by numerous galleries internationally.-Life and work:...
: Seeing, Drawing, Making; Rackstraw Downes
Rackstraw Downes
Rackstraw Downes is a British-born realist painter and author. His oil paintings are notable for their meticulous detail accumulated during months of plein-air sessions, depictions of industry and the environment, and elongated compositions with complex perspective.-Education:Born Rodney Harry...
: Onsite Paintings, 1972-2008; Jean Luc Mylayne; Alan Shields: Stirring the Waters; Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement...
: American Indian Encounters; and Jack Youngerman
Jack Youngerman
-Biography:Jack Youngerman, was born 1926, St. Louis, MO, moved in Louisville, KY in 1929. He studied art at the University of North Carolina from 1944 to 1946 under a wartime navy training program, and graduated from the University of Missouri in 1947....
: Folding Screen Paintings. Notable among recent group exhibitions are Encouraging American Genius: Master Paintings from the Corcoran Gallery of Art
Corcoran Gallery of Art
The Corcoran Gallery of Art is the largest privately supported cultural institution in Washington, DC. The museum's main focus is American art. The permanent collection includes works by Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Thomas Gainsborough, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, Pablo...
; All the More Real; Sand: Memory, Meaning, and Metaphor; Modern Photographs: The Machine, the Body, and the City; and Damaged Romanticism: A Mirror of Modern Emotion.
The Parrish also has a long tradition of juried exhibitions. For most of the Museum’s history, these exhibitions were open to all artists, who were selected by a panel of three judges. In 2008, in recognition of the Museum’s important mission of celebrating the art of the East End, the format changed. Submissions were limited to artists from eastern Long Island, whose digital entries were reviewed by nine established artists from the region. Each juror gradually narrowed his or her choices until a single selection was made. The nine chosen artists exhibited their work in tandem with the artists who selected them. This format not only focused on the artists of the region but also encouraged interaction among artists at different points in their careers. Artists Choose Artists of the East End will be a recurring program.
When the Parrish moves to its Water Mill location in 2012, it will have 4500 square feet (418.1 m²) of exhibition space dedicated to temporary exhibitions and 7500 square feet (696.8 m²) for display of the permanent collection. Future shows (2011 and 2012) will focus on Esteban Vicente
Esteban Vicente
Esteban Vicente Pérez , was an American painter born in Turégano, Spain. He was one of the first generation of New York School abstract expressionists.-Early life:...
, Juliao Sarmento, Dorothea Rockburne
Dorothea Rockburne
Dorothea Rockburne is an abstract painter drawing inspiration primarily from her deep interest in mathematics and astronomy. In 1950 she moved to the United States to attend Black Mountain College, where she studied with mathematician Max Dehn, a lifelong influence on her work...
, Alice Aycock
Alice Aycock
-Biography:Aycock studied at Douglass College in New Brunswick, New Jersey, graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in 1968. She then went to New York City where she studied for her masters at Hunter College, and where she was taught and supervised by Robert Morris; she graduated in 1971...
, and Jennifer Bartlett
Jennifer Bartlett
Jennifer Losch Bartlett is an American artist. She is best-known for paintings combining abstract and representational styles.-Education:...
.
External links
- Parrish Art Museum - official site
- http://artists.parrishart.org/ - East End Stories web site
- http://collection.parrishart.org/ - Parrish Art Museum collection search