Parrish Art Museum 2023 Exhibitions To Celebrate the 125th Anniversary

In 2023 the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill celebrates its 125-year legacy as a leading arts institution on the East End with several shows including the landmark, year-long exhibition “Artists Choose Parrish,” featuring 41 renowned contemporary artists presenting their own work alongside works they selected from the collection; “James Brooks: A Painting Is a Real Thing,” a comprehensive survey of six decades of work by the artist, a key figure in late 20th-century American art; the installation “Les Enfants D’Ouranos” by JR on the south façade of the building; and “Chisme” by Salvadorean artist Jose Campos (aka Studio Lenca). The museum will offer a slate of related programs including talks by participating artists, programs focused on the Parrish through the decades, and the Midsummer Gala on July 15, honoring artists Eddie Martinez, Sam Moyer, and Hank Willis Thomas.

“We are delighted to celebrate the Museum’s 125-year legacy of relevancy and excellence — and our evolution as a leading institution in one of the most important creative communities in the U.S. — with a unique history of attracting, inspiring, and supporting artists for generations,” said the museum’s Executive Director Mónica Ramírez-Montagut. “This important anniversary milestone is a pivotal moment that allows a renewed commitment to providing access to excellence in the arts for varied and diverse audiences in this region and abroad, always anchored in the creative force of our unique location. It’s an exciting moment to solidify our relevance and contributions to the field of art, architecture, arts education, and community engagement.”

Regarding “Artists Choose Parrish,” Corinne Erni, exhibition organizer and Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs and Senior Curator of ArtsReach and Special Projects, said, “I am thrilled to be working with such a high-caliber roster of artists who have made their home on the East End. The Parrish epitomizes and celebrates the creative force emanating from this region, where new art movements and communities continue to take shape and radiate globally. Having these living artists engage with the collection brings not only new perspectives to who we are as a museum in this area, but to the history and future of American art at large.”

The Parrish Art Museum is at 279 Montauk Highway in Water Mill. Visit parrishart.org for more details.

“Artists Choose Parrish,” April 16 - February 18, 2024

The foundation of the 125th Anniversary is the museum-wide exhibition “Artists Choose Parrish,” created to drive a renewed artistic dialogue and reveal fresh perspectives on the museum’s collection. Forty-one renowned contemporary artists were invited to select artworks from the breadth of the Parrish collection of over 3,600 works, ranging from mid-19th century to today, to show in dialogue with their own work. Artists’ presentations range from a single original work paired with their selection, to full-gallery installations inspired by collection works, the Herzog & de Meuron designed spaces, or their own visions of presenting and experiencing works in the museum. “Artists Choose Parrish” serves as a pivot point between the past and present, with an eye to the future of the museum and within the broader art world. The exhibition will be presented in three installations, each with an opening reception as follows:

Part I: Opening reception, Saturday, April 29. On view April 16 - August 6. Participating artists: Nanette Carter, Claude Lawrence, Robert Longo, Eddie Martinez, Sam Moyer, Ugo Rondinone, Cindy Sherman, Leslee Stradford, Joe Zucker. On view April 30 - July 23. Participating artists: Tony Bechara, Ross Bleckner, Pamela Council, Jeremy Dennis, Eric Fischl, Robert Gober, Mary Heilmann, Enoc Perez, Michelle Stuart, Hank Willis Thomas and Nina Yankowitz.

Part II: Opening reception, Saturday, August 19. On view August 20 - February. Participating artists: Marina Adams, Alice Aycock, Vija Celmins, Rachel Feinstein, Ralph Gibson, Sheree Hovsepian, Suzanne McClelland, Alix Pearlstein, Ned Smyth, Donald Sultan, John Torreano, Stanley Whitney.

Part III: Opening reception, Saturday, October 28. On view October 29 - February 18. Participating artists: Richard Aldrich, Joanne Greenbaum, Virginia Jaramillo, Rashid Johnson, KAWS, Mel Kendrick, David Salle, Sean Scully, Amy Sillman.

“Artists Choose Parrish” is organized by Corinne Erni, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs and Senior Curator of ArtsReach and Special Projects, with support from Assistant Curator and Publications Coordinator Kaitlin Halloran, and Assistant Curator Brianna L. Hernández

“JR: Les Enfants D’Ouranos,” May - September, 2023

The series “Les Enfants D’Ouranos: (Children of Ouranos) continues JR’s previous work for Déplacé.e.s, featuring children from refugee camps in Rwanda, Ukraine, Mauritania, Greece and Colombia. The project comprised aerial photographs of 170-foot-long banners — carried by groups of people around the camp or a city — that depict the full image of a child running playfully. “Les Enfants D’Ouranos” also presents images of carefree children from the same refugee camps playing soccer, but without context. Rather, the children are placed in an idealized playing field where dreams may still come true.

For “Les Enfants D’Ouranos,” JR employs a new technique. Instead of printing the positive image, the artist transfers the negative directly onto wood, thereby alluding to an imprinted, idealized version of youth. In these images, surfaces reflecting light are reversed and presented as shadows, and the shadowed areas are filled with light. JR’s new strategy inverts established processes and hierarchies, upending the status quo. The artist instills images of the children directly impacted by global conflict and living in refugee camps with transcendence and the opportunity to command influence.

A large scale, site-specific version of “Les Enfants D’Ouranos” will be installed on the façade of the museum. This building intervention and JR’s signature artistic practice will become part of the Parrish’s dominant public view and will coincide with the institution’s 125th anniversary. As the Parrish looks back at its own origins, “Les Enfants D’Ouranos” will be a reminder that, during that process of determination and consolidation, it’s valuable to look through a reversal lens to identify spaces that open up possibilities for the future.

“James Brooks: A Painting is a Real Thing,” August 6 - October 15, 2023

Opening reception, Saturday, August 5. This show will be the first full-scale retrospective in 35 years of work by the Abstract Expressionist James Brooks —a celebrated painter of the 1950s New York School — who embraced experimentation and risk throughout his seven-decade career. Comprising over 100 important paintings and works on paper by Brooks (1906 - 1992) dating from the 1920s to 1983, the exhibition presents 84 selections from a major gift to the museum in 2017 by the James and Charlotte Brooks Foundation, as well as loans from private and public collections.

Organized chronologically, “A Painting is a Real Thing” begins in the 1920s with work by Brooks shaped by Social Realism and further developed in New York where he worked as a sign letterer and WPA muralist; followed by abstract works from the 1930s. The exhibition picks up after Brooks returned from service in World War II as a combat artist with works that reference the military, and through his period of experimentation with abstraction that led to a career-defining development in 1948. As he worked on an oil-on-paper series that involved gluing paper to canvas, the paste bled through, essentially creating another painting on the reverse side. The unexpected consequence was the genesis of a new direction the artist would pursue for decades: a staining technique that inspired a more improvisational approach. Through the decades into the 1980s, Brooks continued his experimentation — with color, materials including sand and acrylics, and larger scale — represented by 30 paintings in the exhibition.

“A Painting is a Real Thing” is organized by Klaus Ottmann, Ph.D., chief curator emeritus of the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., and the former Robert Lehman curator at the Parrish, with support from Curatorial Assistant and Publications Coordinator Kaitlin Halloran. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated 125-page catalogue with interpretive essays by Ottmann and Syd Solomon, plus a detailed chronology.

Additional 2023 Exhibition

“Chisme,” March 12 - April 16. Studio Lenca (Jose Campos) presents the installation “Chisme,” — 15 woodcut figures depicting Latinx working class migrants in vibrant colors. “Chisme” is a continuation of Studio Lenca’s exploration of the representation of Latinx communities as reimagined playful figures, bold and empowered to take up space and reframe displacement and alienation. “Chisme” was completed in partnership with WeCount!, a membership-led organization of immigrant workers in South Florida who made drawings of plants, trees, and seeds on the back of the figures.