The Nassau County Museum of Art (NCMA) is located east of
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
on the former Frick "Clayton" Estate, a property in
Roslyn Harbor in the heart of Long Island’s
Gold Coast
Gold Coast may refer to:
Places Africa
* Gold Coast (region), in West Africa, which was made up of the following colonies, before being established as the independent nation of Ghana:
** Portuguese Gold Coast (Portuguese, 1482–1642)
** Dutch G ...
. The main museum building, named in honor of art collectors and philanthropists
Arnold A. Saltzman and his wife Joan, is a three-story
Georgian-style
Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1714 and 1830. It is named after the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover—George I, George II, Geor ...
mansion that exemplifies Gold Coast architecture of the late 19th century. In addition to the mansion, NCMA, which receives nearly 200,000 visitors each year, includes The Manes Family Art & Education Center, opened in 2017, as well as a Sculpture Park, a Formal Garden, rare specimen trees and marked walking trails.
Overview
NCMA annually presents major rotating exhibitions, many of which are original to the museum and are organized by the museum’s own curatorial staff. The museum's exhibitions have reached across a broad spectrum of artistic concerns—from European and American art movements,
[Surrealism, September 2000 & May 2007][Reflections of Opulence, May 2001][A Century of Prints, March 2003][La Belle Epoque, June 2003][European Art Between the Wars, May 2004][Picasso, February 2005][Picasso and the School of Paris, November 2006][Pop and Op, February 2008][The Subject is Women: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, January 2010] to epochs of American and European history,
[The Revolutionary War, January 2000][Napoleon And His Age, January 2001][Window on the West, February 2002][The World of Theodore Roosevelt, November 2002][The WPA Era, August 2004][The American Spirit: Paintings by Mort Künstler, August 2006][Napoleon and Eugenie, June 2009] to the influences of one art form or another
[Dance, Dance, Dance, June 2000][Explosive Photography/Photorealism, January 2004][Geoffrey Holder: A Life in Art, Theater and Dance, November 2007] and to the impact of Long Island artists on art and design.
[The Hamptons Since Pollock, April 2000][Tiffany and the Gilded Age, September 2008] In addition to these major exhibitions, NCMA mounts exhibitions of work by contemporary artists in the Manes Center gallery.
NCMA’s collection of more than 600 art objects spans American and European art of the 19th and 20th centuries. Encompassing all types of media, the collection includes works by
Auguste Rodin,
Édouard Vuillard
Jean-Édouard Vuillard (; 11 November 186821 June 1940) was a French painter, decorative artist and printmaker. From 1891 through 1900, he was a prominent member of the Nabis, making paintings which assembled areas of pure color, and interior sc ...
,
Pierre Bonnard,
Roy Lichtenstein,
Larry Rivers
Larry Rivers (born Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg) (1923 – 2002) was an American artist, musician, filmmaker, and occasional actor. Considered by many scholars to be the "Godfather" and "Grandfather" of Pop art, he was one of the first artists ...
,
Robert Rauschenberg,
Chaim Gross
Chaim Gross (March 17, 1902 – May 5, 1991) was an American sculptor and educator of Ukrainian Jewish origin.
Childhood
Gross was born to a Jewish family in Austrian Galicia, in the village of Wolowa (now known as Mizhhiria, Ukraine), in t ...
,
Moses Soyer
Moses Soyer (December 25, 1899 – September 3, 1974) was an American social realist painter.
Biography
He was born as Moses Schoar and both he and his identical twin brother, Raphael, were born in Borisoglebsk, Tambov, a southern province of R ...
,
Audrey Flack,
Frank Stella
Frank Philip Stella (born May 12, 1936) is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. Stella lives and works in New York City.
Biography
Frank Stella was born in Ma ...
,
Barbara Prey,
George Segal and
Alex Katz
Alex Katz (born July 24, 1927) is an American figurative artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints.
Early life and career
Alex Katz was born July 24, 1927, to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, as the son of an émigré who ha ...
among many others.
NCMA's 145 acres constitute one of the largest publicly accessible
sculpture garden
A sculpture garden or sculpture park is an outdoor garden or park which includes the presentation of sculpture, usually several permanently sited works in durable materials in landscaped surroundings.
A sculpture garden may be private, owned by ...
s on the East Coast. Among the more than 30 sculptures sited on the property to interact with the natural environment are works by
Tom Otterness, Fernando Botero, Chaim Gross, Alejandro Colunga,
Masayuki Nagare
was a modernist Japanese sculptor, nicknamed "Samurai Artist" for his commitment to traditional Japanese aesthetics. He was born in 1923 in Nagasaki to Kojuro Nakagawa, the founder and president of Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. As a teenage ...
,
Richard Serra
Richard Serra (born November 2, 1938) is an American artist known for his large-scale sculptures made for site-specific landscape, Urban area, urban, and Architecture, architectural settings. Serra's sculptures are notable for their material q ...
,
Manolo Valdes Mark DiSuvero and many others.
The museum's gardens and walking trails are also notable. Commissioned in 1925 by Frances Frick, an avid horticulturist and garden club member, the Frick Estate’s Formal Gardens have been restored to the original design of the famed landscape architect,
Marian Cruger Coffin. Coffin considered these Formal Gardens to be among her finest creations. In recent years, the historic garden trellis and water tower have been restored to original condition. Additionally, many pathways through the 145-acre property are now marked as guided nature trails.
History
The land that eventually became the museum grounds was previously the undeveloped portion of
Cedarmere, poet
William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant (November 3, 1794 – June 12, 1878) was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the ''New York Evening Post''. Born in Massachusetts, he started his career as a lawyer but showed an interest in poetry ...
's retreat from his busy life in New York City. In the 1890s, his family sold all but seven acres to former congressman
Lloyd Bryce, who hired
Ogden Codman, Jr. to build a
Georgian Revival
Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1714 and 1830. It is named after the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover— George I, George II, Ge ...
mansion on the high ground in the middle of the property, overlooking nearby
Hempstead Harbor
Hempstead Harbor (also known as Hempstead Bay) is a bay hugging the northern coast of Long Island, New York. Located off of the Long Island Sound, it forms the northernmost portion of the political border between the Nassau County towns of Oyst ...
.
In 1919, Bryant’s heirs sold the estate to
Henry Clay Frick
Henry Clay Frick (December 19, 1849 – December 2, 1919) was an American industrialist, financier, and art patron. He founded the H. C. Frick & Company coke manufacturing company, was chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company, and played a maj ...
, the co-founder of
U.S. Steel, for his son,
Childs Frick. The architect
Sir Charles Carrick Allom was commissioned to redesign the facade and much of the interior. The Fricks named their home "Clayton".
Childs Frick, his wife Frances and their four children lived at Clayton for almost 50 years, until his death in 1965. The county bought the estate four years later and converted it into a museum, called the Nassau County Museum of Art. In 1989, NCMA became a private not-for-profit institution and since then has been governed and funded by a private board of trustees which includes many of Long Island’s most prominent business, civic and social leaders.
The Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, which spun off from the Nassau County Museum of Art, operated from 1978 to current.
Past exhibitions
*''Surrealism'', September 2000 and May 2007
*''Reflections of Opulence'', May 2001
*''A Century of Prints'', March 2003
*''La Belle Epoque'', June 2003
*''European Art Between the Wars'', May 2004
*''Picasso'', February 2005
*''Picasso and the School of Paris'', November 2006
*''Pop and Op'', February 2008
*''The Subject is Women: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism'', January 2010
*''The Revolutionary War'', January 2000
*''Napoleon And His Age'', January 2001
*''Window on the West'', February 2002
*''The World of Theodore Roosevelt'', November 2002
*''The WPA Era'', August 2004
*''The American Spirit: Paintings by Mort Künstler'', August 2006
*''Napoleon and Eugenie'', June 2009
*''Dance, Dance, Dance'', June 2000
*''Explosive Photography/Photorealism'', January 2004
*''Geoffrey Holder: A Life in Art, Theater and Dance'', November 2007
*''The Hamptons Since Pollock'', April 2000
*''Tiffany and the Gilded Age'', September 2008
*''Jim Dine'', March 2012
*''Chagall'', July 2012
*''Alex Katz'', June 2013
*''Peter Max'', October 2013
*''Photorealism'', July 2014
*''China Then and Now'', November 2014
*''Out of the Vault'', March 2015
References
External links
Museum website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nassau County Museum Of Art
Roslyn Harbor, New York
Houses completed in 1901
Art museums established in 1969
Sculpture gardens, trails and parks in New York (state)
Town of North Hempstead, New York
Art museums and galleries in New York (state)
Museums in Nassau County, New York
Children's museums in New York (state)
1969 establishments in New York (state)
Georgian Revival architecture in New York (state)