At 100, Parrish Hits Its Stride
While East Hampton celebrates its 350th anniversary this year, in Southampton the Parrish Art Museum is celebrating its centenary.
The museum, whose elegant Italianate facade is approached by shallow steps set back from Job's Lane, was founded by Samuel Parrish, a successful Quaker lawyer, to house his collection of Italian Renaissance art.
Its original layout of dark-paneled walls and Victorian clutter long since gave way to airy well-lit spaces and masterfully curated exhibits, but the all‚e of Roman busts in the museum's garden still nicely represents the less-than-trendy persona of South ampton.
School Art Festival
The yearlong parade of events to mark the occasion will get under way on Saturday, St. Valentine's Day, with a community concert at 2 p.m. and a birthday party from 3 to 5.
The highlight of the party, which will be attended by Southampton Town and Suffolk County officials, will be a huge birthday cake in the shape of the art museum's main building.
The party coincides with the opening of the annual School Art Festival, which will show work by students from all the schools in Southampton Town, and the concurrent exhibits "Community Portraits: Our Friends and Families" and a display of landscapes and portraits from the museum's permanent collection. All three shows can be visited through March 15.
The concert will include a string medley by elementary school musicians, a choral performance by Westhampton Beach High Schoolers, and a musical theater act by students from Our Lady of the Hamptons School. Centennial T-shirts will be given to all students attending the reception.
Annual Juried Show
The Parrish's juried exhibits of works by East End artists have always been much anticipated. This year the Centennial Open, which runs from March 22 through April 26, is part juried show and part invitational.
The show, which will have nearly 75 works, will include such East End heavy hitters as Eric Fischl, Jane Freilicher, April Gornik, and Saul Steinberg but also feature emerging artists such as Sally Egbert, Robert Harms, David Slater, and Nico Yektai.
De Kooning, Lichtenstein
Opening in May, "Changing Places: Looking at Southampton" will document how the village of Southampton has changed over time using paintings, photographs, archival maps, and contemporary photographs taken by Southampton High School students.
As a fitting marker of its 100th year, the museum's major summer show, "Dreams for the Next Century," will feature the work of two East End art stars of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art who died in the past year: Willem de Kooning and Roy Lichtenstein.
The show will be accompanied by a site-specific installation by the contemporary artist Barbara Kruger.
A Rebirth
The Parrish Art Museum, particularly since coming under the direction of its present director, Trudy C. Kramer, is now a vibrant and dynamic entity, but some 50 years ago the museum was closed and moribund, two world wars and the Great Depression having brought developments to a standstill.
It was the arrival of Rebecca Bolling Littlejohn, as an energetic president of the board of trustees in the 1950s, that got it back on its feet again.
She stirred things up, launched fund-raising drives, initiated a campaign to acquire works by Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Thomas Moran, James Whistler, and other turn-of-the-century artists with connections to the South Fork, and continued to benefit the museum even after death, bequeathing it her personal collection of more than 300 paintings, many by William Merritt Chase.
Hitting Its Stride
Since then, the museum has concentrated on acquiring 20th century works of art, particularly those of the succeeding generations of painters who have lived and worked on the East End, such as James Brooks, Chuck Close, Jane Freilicher, Lee Krasner, John Marin, Alfonso Ossorio, Larry Rivers, Joan Snyder, Esteban Vicente, and Joe Zucker, as well as de Kooning and Lichtenstein.
As the Parrish Art Museum puts 100 years behind it and prepares to enter the new millennium, it appears to be hale, hearty, and just getting into the confident stride of maturity.