The Art Scene: 01.22.15

Humanitarian Architecture

The Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, in association with A.I.A. Peconic, will present “Pro Bono: Architects Who Serve Humanity,” a discussion focusing on architects who volunteer their time for charitable causes, tomorrow at 6 p.m.

Maziar Behrooz, an East Hampton architect known for work that involves civic, community, and art projects, will moderate a conversation between Sharon Davis, a New York architect, and Jane Walentas, an artist and philanthropist.

Miss Davis, the principal of Sharon Davis Design, is dedicated to designing buildings that change the lives of people and communities. She was commissioned by Women for Women International to design the Women’s Opportunity Center in Kayonza, Rwanda, which serves as an educational and community center to help female survivors of war to support themselves and their families.

Ms. Walentas, who works in New York and on the East End, spearheaded the restoration of Jane’s Carousel in Brooklyn Bridge Park, which opened to the public in 2011, and founded Friends of Jane’s Carousel, which is dedicated to the preservation of the historic landmark.

Tickets are $10, free for members, students, and children.

New Curatorial Grant

The Parrish has also announced a multi-year grant from the Century Arts Foundation to underwrite the position of curator of special projects, which from its inception has been filled by Andrea Grover.

Among the many initiatives developed by Ms. Grover are the Platform series, PechaKucha Night Hamptons, and the Parrish Road Show. She has overseen more than 250 programs since joining the museum as associate curator in 2011.

Larry Rivers at Tibor de Nagy

An exhibition of mixed-media constructions by Larry Rivers dating from the mid-1960s to the early-1970s opens today at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York City and will remain on view through March 7. Many of the works have not been exhibited in more than 40 years.

According to the gallery, Rivers abandoned much that had established his reputation, including his painterly touch, in 1966, when he began to work with new materials, including Mylar, plastics, and Plexiglas, which were used in three-dimensional constructions and collages. As with all of his work, Rivers’s engagement with the personal and political, the public and the private, is apparent in the mixed-media pieces.

Rivers, who lived in Southampton from 1951 until his death in 2002, was an accomplished jazz saxophonist before he was encouraged to take up painting by two artist friends, Jane Freilicher and Nell Blaine. He was in many ways a maverick whose work defied neat categorization and ranged from gestural abstraction to figurative paintings and sculpture.