Parrish Art Museum Opens its New Building in Nov 2012

DISPATCH - May 25, 2012 (9:15 a.m.)

SOUTHAMPTON, NY

The Parrish Art Museum will open in its new Water Mill home in November. A Grand Opening to welcome the public is planned for Nov 10, the museum announced this week. Admission will be free throughout the Grand Opening weekend (including Veteran's Day on Mon, Nov 12).

The museum opens a bit earlier if you're a Southampton resident, a museum member, or a resident of the Southampton and Tuckahoe School districts. If you helped make the new building a reality, private access and special events are being planned for Mon, Nov 5, through Fri, Nov. 9.

The Parrish's new home is located on 14 acres in Water Mill, NY. It nearly doubles the size of the existing building and triples the exhibition space, according to the museum. The new building has a budget of $26.2 million with 95% of funds already raised, according to a release.

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North View Exterior. Computer-generated image. Copyright Herzog & de Meuron.

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Besides multiple gallery spaces, the new museum will have a multi-purpose room for programs and presentations, a cafe, a covered terrace for outdoor dining, administrative and support spaces, a climate-controlled loading dock, and spaces for conservation and storage.

The new building features 12,200 square feet of gallery space. Around 60 percent of the space (7,600 sq feet) will be designated to exhibiting the museum's permanent collection.

Artists represented in the collection include William Merritt Chase, Fairfield Porter, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein, Chuck Close, Dan Flavin, Esteban Vicente and others.

“The galleries are the heart and soul of the new Museum,” according to Alicia Longwell, the museum's Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Chief Curator, Art and Education. “Now, for the first time, the Parrish will have the wherewithal to make available on a permanent basis our distinguished collection of American art, while simultaneously presenting special exhibitions.”

The Parrish will christen its new location by presenting works from its permanent collection plus two exhibitions in its changing exhibition space.

"Malcolm Morley: On Paper" opens on Nov 10 and remains on view through Jan 13, 2013. The exhibition is designed to "...illuminate the artist's working method while underscoring the seamless transition among paper mediums, including screenprint, etching, and monotype and the...passages of this progression," according the museum. Morley lives and works in Bellport, Long Island.

The second exhibition in the "temporary exhibition galleries" is recent museum acquisitions. The show includes Ross Bleckner’s "Architecture of the Sky" (1990); Eric Freeman’s "Red Inside Green" (2005); Louise Nevelson’s "Untitled" (ca. late 1970s); Dorothea Rockburne’s "The Cross is in the Center, Tintoretto" (1988-1989); and Keith Sonnier’s "Palm: Saw Tooth Blatt" (2004).

The museum's move to Water Mill culminates a multi-year construction project. The Parrish broke ground on July 19, 2010 at their new site. The building was designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. Ben Krupinski Builder of East Hampton is the general contractor for the project.

The building was designed to reference farmland buildings of the East End and to "emphasize the relationship of art to nature, and to be flexible and welcoming," according to the Parrish.

“We could not be prouder of this amazing accomplishment,” Parrish Art Museum director Terrie Sultan said. “The new building is a beautiful embodiment of the creative legacy of the East End, and with light-filled galleries, a flexible multi-purpose performance space, and many other public amenities, the Parrish will take its place as a real center for cultural engagement for the entire East End.”

This is the first art museum built on the East End of Long Island in more than a century, according to the Parrish. The Parrish Art Museum was founded in 1897. In the mid-1950s, the museum began evolving from a "small village art gallery" into an important art museum with a collection than spans from the nineteenth century to the present, according to the Parrish.

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Aerial View of the future Water Mill home of the Parrish Art Museum. Photo: EEFAS/Cully.

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BASIC FACTS: The Parrish Art Museum announced it will open its new Water Mill location on Nov 10, 2012. On view will be two exhibitions: "Malcolm Moley: On Paper" and recent acquisitions to the museum's collection. Selections from the museum's collection will also be on view.

After the move in November, the museum will be located at 279 Montauk Hwy, Water Mill, NY 11976

Parrish Art Museum: http://parrishart.org/.

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© 2012 Pat Rogers and Hamptons Art Hub. All rights reserved.