Parrish Art Museum Receives James Brooks And Charlotte Park Collection

The East End has long attracted legions of artists who have been drawn to the area not only for its famous light, but also for the artistic camaraderie that developed as a natural outgrowth of the large number of creative figures who set up shop here.

Among them were James Brooks and Charlotte Park.

Mr. Brooks and Ms. Park were key figures in the abstract expressionist movement beginning in the 1940s and they were also contemporaries of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. Married in 1947, they spent their first summer on the East End that same year, in a tiny shack perched on the Montauk Bluffs. By 1957, they had moved to Springs full-time and had become active members of the artistic community.

Now, much of the artwork Mr. Brooks and Ms. Park produced during their lifetimes is coming back to the East End thanks to a unique partnership between the James and Charlotte Brooks Foundation and the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill.

Recently, it was announced that the foundation is giving the Parrish 89 works by the two artists. The Parrish will, in turn, establish the James and Charlotte Brooks Fund to support the collection and present exhibitions of the work. The fund will also underwrite other projects and programming at the Parrish related to contemporary art and the work of the two artists.

In a recent phone interview, John R. Lane, a trustee of the James and Charlotte Brooks Foundation and chair of its arts committee, explained how and why the foundation was initially set up back in 2000.

“Charlotte and Jim had no children and so they needed a tax vehicle,” he said. “If the art had gone to some beneficiary, there would have been huge tax liability.”

James Brooks, who died in 1992, left all of his possessions and artwork to his wife, who died in 2010 and left their collective body of work to the foundation.

“We knew we would get this when she died, but we didn’t receive the art until several years later when the estate was probated,” Mr. Lane added.

That’s when the work of the foundation truly began and the trustees decided that its mission would be to advance the legacies of both artists.

“We wanted to ensure a core collection that was historically more or less complete would go to one particular and appropriate museum. That turns out to be the Parrish,” Mr. Lane said. “The second thing was to distribute works—either individually or in small groups—to other museums that were meaningful to them personally or as part of their artistic education or charter.”

As a result, 170 pieces of artwork have been distributed to 20 museums around the country while the Parrish alone will receive a total of 89 works by Mr. Brooks and Ms. Park.

“There would still be a lot of art remaining, and we wanted to make that a fundable resource, so the institution that received the non-accessioned works could sell them and make an endowment that would support the collection and modern and contemporary art projects,” Mr. Lane said.

As the receiving institution, the Parrish will be given additional artwork by the two artists that can be sold in order to further the mission of promoting the couple’s legacy.

As major figures in abstract expressionism, the lives of Charlotte and James Brooks revolved around their artist friends on the East End. Since it is located in the midst of where these artists lived and worked, the Parrish turned out to be an ideal place for the bulk of their work to land.

“Their life passions were their friends and the contemporary art world of New York in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s,” Mr. Lane said. “It seemed appropriate as trustees we should continue their commitment to art of their own era as well as developing the future of art.”

Mr. Lane noted that another key goal of the foundation—which will cease to exist upon distribution of the artists’ assets—was that the museum receiving the bulk of the assets would organize a major retrospective of James Brooks’s works and produce a scholarly publication related to it.

The Parrish plans to do just that in 2020.

For the museum, this partnership represents a unique model in the art world and one that ties in perfectly with its own mission.

Terrie Sultan, the director of the Parrish, is excited about receiving such a comprehensive collection of works by James Brooks and Charlotte Park, and earlier this month she sat down in her office to talk about the foundation and how it ties in with the goals of the museum.

“When I came here and imagined what the new Parrish might be—its programs, collection and direction, [curator] Alicia [Longwell] and I discussed that we had so much more space we can contextualize contemporary art with objects from the collection.

“We’re not an encyclopedic museum and we missed out on the $500 Jackson Pollocks, so back filling isn’t doable or maybe relevant,” she added. “What we do have is strong holdings of specific artists—40 works of William Merritt Chase, and 250 of Fairfield Porter’s. We were discussing the wisdom of working to collect certain artists in depth so we could have new scholarship, contextualization and ways of thinking about other artists who were important to art history and also have a relationship to the East End.”

Ms. Sultan points to Esteban Vicente and Alan Shields as examples of East End artists whose work is well represented at the Parrish, and which they’ll continue to pursue.

“We were thinking of other artists, and as we were going through the process of vetting, we were approached by the trustees of the foundation,” she said. “This is exactly the kind of thing we were talking about, but we hadn’t envisioned something as substantive and ground breaking as this.”

Ms. Sultan noted while the museum had a few pieces by James Brooks and Charlotte Park in its collection and was hoping to acquire more as funding allowed, the partnership with the James and Charlotte Brooks Foundation changed everything.

“It all just came together in a very thoughtful and very forward looking way,” Ms. Sultan said. “The foundation had a raison d’être—it can meet all of its founders’ visions with this relationship.

“… And we get to work with this fabulous material to enhance various themes and concepts related to East End abstraction in the 20th century.”

Though East End audiences still have to wait a few years to see the full retrospective of James Brooks’s work at the Parrish, in November, 20 paintings by the artist will go on view in “The Permanent Collection: Five and Forward,” a year-long exhibition marking the fifth anniversary of the Parrish’s move to its Herzog & de Meuron-designed building in Water Mill. For more information about the Parrish Art Museum and its partnership with the James and Charlotte Brooks Foundation, visit parrishart.org.