When Guild Hall’s Student Art Festival returns this weekend after taking a hiatus in 2023 while gallery renovations were underway, students and their families will have lots to celebrate beyond simply seeing their work hanging on the walls of a prestigious venue.
“It’s a culmination of a really in-depth process” that spanned two years and incorporated the work of 20 guest artists and students at 15 schools, said Anthony Madonna, Guild Hall’s director of learning and new works. “That idea of creating together is the core focus. All these works are collaborative works — they are not individual projects.”
The show opens Saturday with a reception from noon to 2 p.m., and will remain on display through Feb. 26, accompanied periodically by special events for the community at large.
The theme is “Eco vs. Ego,” based on a concept introduced by Edwina von Gal, the noted environmental activist and landscape designer who founded the Perfect Earth Project. As one can guess, it addresses some big questions.
“How do we honor the places that we live in and show care for them, and how do we do that with the sort of contemporary practices and maybe even the bad habits that we have?” Mr. Madonna said in an interview. “Those questions of care for our natural surroundings and questioning our role in that has been the focus of this entire two-year process.”
Also new for this year’s festival is that it was curated entirely by Guild Hall’s Teen Arts Council, a group of 22 creative leaders from high schools in East Hampton, Sag Harbor, and Bridgehampton and the Ross School. The council even made a three-dimensional model of the Guild Hall gallery so it could arrange the art as it saw fit.
“It is so inspiring to see the imagination of a younger mind,” Mr. Madonna said. “It allows you to experience a viewpoint that perhaps you’re missing.”
The full listing of related events is online at guildhall.org. Admission is free; the gallery is open Friday through Monday from noon to 5 p.m.