The Parrish Art Museum is an

art museum An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art, usually from the museum's own collection. It might be in public or private ownership and may be accessible to all or have restrictions in place. Although primarily co ...

designed by Herzog & de Meuron Architects and located in Water Mill, New York, whereto it moved in 2012 from Southampton Village. The museum focuses extensively on work by artists from the artist colony of the South Shore (Long Island) and

North Shore (Long Island) The North Shore of Long Island is the area along the northern coast of New York's Long Island bordering Long Island Sound. Known for its extreme wealth and lavish estates, the North Shore exploded into affluence at the turn of the 20th century ...

. The Parrish Art Museum was founded in 1898. It has grown into a major art museum with a permanent collection of more than 3,500 works of art from the nineteenth century to the present, including works by such contemporary painters and sculptors such as John Chamberlain,

Chuck Close Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits using a very l ...

, Eric Fischl,

April Gornik : April Gornik (born 1953, Cleveland, Ohio) is an American artist who paints American landscapes. Her realist yet dreamlike paintings and drawings embody oppositions and speak to America's historically conflicted relationship with nature. While ...

, Donald Sultan, Elizabeth Peyton, as well as by masters Dan Flavin,

Roy Lichtenstein Roy Fox Lichtenstein (; October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was an American pop artist. During the 1960s, along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and James Rosenquist among others, he became a leading figure in the new art movement. ...

Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionism, abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his "Drip painting, drip technique" of pouring or splas ...

, Lee Krasner, and Willem de Kooning. The Parrish houses among the world's most important collections of works by the preeminent

American Impressionist American Impressionism was a style of painting related to European Impressionism and practiced by American artists in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century through the beginning of the twentieth. The style is characterized by loose b ...

William Merritt Chase William Merritt Chase (November 1, 1849October 25, 1916) 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 School of Design. ...

and by the groundbreaking post-war American realist painter Fairfield Porter.

History

Southampton village location (1898–2012)

The Museum was founded in 1898 by Samuel Longstreth Parrish, a successful attorney and

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...

Robert Pogrebin (July 23, 2006)
The New Parrish Art Museum Was Designed With Light in Mind
''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. who began collecting art in the early 1880s and who established the museum to house his collection of

Italian Renaissance The Italian Renaissance ( it, Rinascimento ) was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Europe and marked the trans ...

painting and copies of classical and Renaissance sculpture. Designed by noted architect Grosvenor Atterbury and constructed in 1897 in downtown Southampton at 25 Jobs Lane, the Museum was incorporated the following year as the Art Museum of Southampton. One of the impetus for founding the museum in an artist colony where

founded the Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art.Carol Kino (March 16, 2011)
On Long Island, Local Inspiration and Global Ambition
''

''. 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, Rebecca Bolling 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 Martin Johnson Heade (August 11, 1819 – September 4, 1904) was an American painter known for his salt marsh landscapes, seascapes, and depictions of tropical birds (such as hummingbirds), as well as lotus blossoms and other still lifes. His pai ...

, Asher B. Durand, John H. Twachtman, John Sloan, and a remarkable collection of thirty-one paintings by

. 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. Once home to

, Willem de Kooning, and

, among many others, today's residents, full-time or seasonal, include

, Ross Bleckner,

, Eric Fischl, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, and Donald Sultan. The museum had long had a significant amount of its collection in storage. It 2000 it acquired the neighboring Rogers Memorial Library for an annex after the library moved to a new building on the edge of town. The library was acquired for $1.1 million from more than $3 million donated by Carroll Petrie for the acquisition and renovations. The buildings were still considered too small for the collection. In 2012 as part of the move to Water Mill the library was sold for $2.875 to Ajax Holding LLC., which has plans to convert the building commercial space and to also restore it. The original Parrish structure is to undergo renovations designed by architect David Rockwell to become the new Southampton Center.

Water Mill location (2012–present)

The museum encountered opposition to its plans to modernize and enlarge its historic Jobs Lane complex. Recognizing the need to grow and to provide for a modern facility with appropriate climate control, the Board of Trustees decided to embark on a new project to design and construct a purpose-built building. In 2005 the Museum purchased a 14-acre (57,000 square meter) site in Water Mill, New York for $3.8 million on the site of a former tree nursery immediately adjacent to the Duck Walk Vineyards winery 2.3 miles (3.7 km) from the original location on Jobs Lane, Southampton. Following extensive research of more than 65 architect candidates,

Pritzker Prize The Pritzker Architecture Prize is an international architecture award presented annually "to honor a living architect or architects whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produ ...

winners Herzog & de Meuron were engaged to develop a new building for the site. Construction costs were estimated at $80 million. The original plan Herzog plan called for an $80 million village 62,974 square foot museum consisting of 30 modest, low-slung buildings, The buildings were to resemble the studios of area painters. Parrish Art Museum, Building Elevation

However, in the

Financial crisis of 2007–2008 Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of ...

and the museum dramatically downsized to be less than a third ($26.2 million) of the original budget. The new structure is designed as a gigantic barn 615 feet long and 95 feet wide. It has poured concrete walls. The building's footprint is 34,000 square feet. It has a 6,000 square foot porch as well as educational and multi-purpose spaces. Inside, the single-floor museum is structured in a very simple way, with public functions (such as reception, store, and café) to the west, administrative offices and art handling to the east, and the galleries, arrayed in two parallel bars, on either side of a central hall. There are seven galleries, totaling 7,600 square feet, for the permanent collection, and three for temporary exhibitions. All of the galleries are illuminated by daylight that shifts gradually throughout the day and changes with the seasons. The building which parallels the Montauk Highway to the south and the

Long Island Rail Road The Long Island Rail Road , often abbreviated as the LIRR, is a commuter rail system in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of New York, stretching from Manhattan to the eastern tip of Suffolk County on Long Island. With an average week ...

tracks to the north is said to have been situated so it can catch the "Hamptons light" which is said to be a reason for the area's popularity as an artist colony (its location about a mile from the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

to the south and two miles from the

Little Peconic Bay The Peconic Bay is the parent name for two bays between the North Fork and South Fork of Long Island in the U.S. state of New York. It is separated from Gardiners Bay by Shelter Island. Peconic Bay is divided by Robins Island into the Great ...

to the north) It officially opened on November 10, 2012. The first temporary exhibit was by

Malcolm Morley Malcolm A. Morley (June 7, 1931 – June 1, 2018) was a British-American artist and painter. He was known as an artist who pioneered in varying styles, working as a photorealist and an expressionist, among many other styles. Life Morley was ...

who has a home in

Bellport, New York Bellport is a village in the Town of Brookhaven in Suffolk County, on the South Shore of Long Island, in New York, United States. The population was 2,084 at the 2010 census. The Incorporated Village of Bellport is named after the Bell famil ...

Notable collections

William Merritt Chase

The Parrish holds the largest public collection of

(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).

Fairfield Porter

Fairfield Porter 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 Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and nor ...

where he had summered since childhood. Writing about the intimate interior paintings of the French artists Vuillard and

Bonnard Bonnard is both a surname and a given name. Notable people with the name include: * Abel Bonnard (1883–1968), French poet, novelist and politician * (18881959), Swiss scholar and translator of classical Greek * Jean-Louis Bonnard (1824&ndas ...

, 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 Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of th ...

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."

Other collections

While the Chase and Porter collections are cornerstones of the Museum's holdings, the permanent collection is wide-ranging. In 1958,

Alfred Corning Clark Alfred Corning Clark I (November 14, 1844 – April 8, 1896) was an American philanthropist and patron of the arts. Early life He was the son of Edward Cabot Clark (1811–1882) and Caroline (née Jordan) Clark (1815–1874). His fathe ...

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 Arthur Bowen Davies (September 26, 1862 – October 24, 1928) was an avant-garde American artist and influential advocate of modern art in the United States c. 1910–1928. Biography Davies was born in Utica, New York, the son of David and Phoe ...

. Works by William Sidney Mount, Winslow Homer,

Ernest Lawson Ernest Lawson (March 22, 1873 – December 18, 1939) was a Canadian-American painter and exhibited his work at the Canadian Art Club and as a member of the American group The Eight, artists who formed a loose association in 1908 to protest ...

, 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 George Benjamin Luks (August 13, 1867 – October 29, 1933) was an American artist, identified with the aggressively realistic Ashcan School of American painting. After travelling and studying in Europe, Luks worked as a newspaper illustrator a ...

, 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 Alfonso Angel Yangco Ossorio (August 2, 1916 – December 5, 1990) was a Filipino American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Manila in 1916 to wealthy Filipino parents from the province of Negros Occidental. His heritage was Hispanic ...

Esteban Vicente Esteban Vicente Pérez (January 20, 1903 – January 10, 2001) was an American painter born in Turégano, Spain. He was one of the first generation of New York School abstract expressionists. He identified as an antifascist. Early life Esteban ...

, Jane Wilson, and Robert Dash, to name just a few. More recent East End arrivals whose work the Museum holds are

Joan Snyder Joan Snyder (born April 16, 1940) is an American painter from New York. She is a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow (1974). Snyder first gained public attention in the early 1970s with her gestur ...

Joe Zucker Joe Zucker (born 1941) is an American artist who was born in Chicago, Illinois, United States. He received a B.F.A. from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1964 and an M.F.A., from the same institution in 1966. His art is quirky and idiosyncratic, ...

, Alice Aycock, Lynda Benglis,

, Keith Sonnier, Mary Heilmann,

, 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 Wesley Bellows (August 12 or August 19, 1882 – January 8, 1925) was an American realist painter, known for his bold depictions of urban life in New York City. He became, according to the Columbus Museum of Art, "the most acclaimed Ame ...

, Marsden Hartley, Larry Rivers,

Helen Frankenthaler Helen Frankenthaler (December 12, 1928 – December 27, 2011) was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (early 1950s u ...

, 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.

Exhibitions

The Museum schedules four or five exhibitions per year. While some recent shows, such as '' Fairfield Porter: 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 '' Alice Aycock: Some Stories are Worth Repeating''; '' Jennifer Bartlett: History of the Universe—Paintings 1970–2011''; '' Rackstraw Downes: Onsite Paintings, 1972–2008''; ''

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 ...

: Seeing, Drawing, Making''; ''

: American Indian Encounters''; ''Platform: Maya Lin''; ''Platform:

Josephine Meckseper Josephine Meckseper (born 1964) is a German artist, active mainly in New York City. Her large-scale installations and films have been exhibited in various international biennials and museum shows worldwide. Life and education Meckseper studied ...

''; ''Jean Luc Mylayne''; ''Alan Shields: Stirring the Waters''; ''

Michelle Stuart Michelle Stuart (born 1933) is an American multidisciplinary artist known for her sculpture, painting and environmental art. She is based in New York City. Early life Stuart was born in 1933 and she grew up in Los Angeles, California. After at ...

: Drawn from Nature''; and ''

Jack Youngerman Jack Albert Youngerman (March 25, 1926 – February 19, 2020) was an American artist known for his constructions and paintings. Biography Jack Youngerman was born in 1926 in Webster Groves, Missouri, moving to Louisville, Kentucky in 1929 w ...

: Folding Screen Paintings.'' Notable among recent group exhibitions are Encouraging ''American Genius: Master Paintings from the

Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Desig ...

''; ''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. After the Parrish moved to its Water Mill location in November 2012, it has of exhibition space dedicated to temporary exhibitions and for display of the permanent collection. Recent shows have focused on Steven and William Ladd; Alan Shields; Jules Feiffer;

; Robert Dash;

; and

Andreas Gursky Andreas Gursky (born 15 January 1955) is a German photographer and professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany. He is known for his large format architecture and landscape colour photographs, often using a high point of view. His works ...

. Future shows will focus on Jane Freilicher and

Jane Wilson Jane Wilson (April 29, 1924 – January 13, 2015) was an American painter associated with both landscape painting and expressionism. She lived and worked in New York City and Water Mill, New York. Early influences Wilson was born in Seymour, ...

;

Alexis Rockman Alexis Rockman (born 1962) is an American contemporary artist known for his paintings that provide depictions of future landscapes as they might exist with impacts of climate change and evolution influenced by genetic engineering. He has exhibited ...

; Ross Bleckner; Eric Fischl, and David Salle. In an interview for Hamptons Magazine in July, 2012, Sultan said that for the opening in November, 2012, the Parrish would show its first-ever installation featuring art from all periods in the museum's 2,600-work permanent collection, adding that many works will be completely new to visitors. During the building campaign, th
article by Judith H. Dobrzynski said
the museum acquired many more painting and sculptures that would be shown, including a large Louise Nevelson sculpture, Dorothea Rockburne's "Touchstone" and Rainer Fetting's "Two Sunsets in East Hampton." Sultan added, "We covet a major Jackson Pollock, and some more great Abstract Expressionism pieces,” she said. “We have some, but it would be nice to have more works by Fischl, Salle, Bleckner, Close, Alice Aycock….”

Directors

* 2008–2020:

Terrie Sultan Terrie Sultan (born 28 October 1952) is an American independent curator and cultural consultant and Principal Museum Strategist for Art Museum Strategies @ Hudson Ferris, a boutique consulting firm based in New York City. AMS is a partnership of tw ...

* 2021: Kelly Taxter * 2022: Melanie Crader (''ad interim'') * 2022–present: Mónica Ramírez-MontagutShanti Escalante-De Mattei (9 June 2022)
Parrish Art Museum Names New Leader After Sudden Resignation of Last Director
'' ARTnews''.

References

* ''Past Imperfect: A Museum Looks at Itself''. By Donna De Salvo, with essays by Maurice Berger, Alan Wallach, and a contribution by Judith Barry. 1993. The Parrish Art Museum in association with The New Press, New York, New York. * ''The Parrish Art Museum: A History of its Collections and Building'' * https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/arts/design/12parrish.html?ref=parrish_art_museum. Article on design of New Parrish by Nicolai Ouroussoff in the New York Times * http://www.newsday.com/long-island/suffolk/at-last-ground-officially-broken-on-new-parrish-art-museum-1.2119423. Newsday's coverage of Parrish Art Museum ground breaking. *
The New Parrish Art Museum Rises
Hampton's Magazine coverage of the anticipated fall, 2012, opening by

Judith H. Dobrzynski Judith Helen Dobrzynski (born March 8, 1949) is an American journalist and instructor in journalism.Parrish Art Museum
– official site
East Parish End Stories web siteParrish Art Museum collection search
{{authority control Museums of American art Museums in Suffolk County, New York Art museums and galleries in New York (state) Herzog & de Meuron buildings Art museums established in 1897 1897 establishments in New York (state) Southampton (town), New York