Besides beautiful beaches, famers markets, people watching and a total change of scenery, one of the Hamptons’ many draws is its art scene. Scattered among the Soho restaurant outposts and seasonal pop-up shops lie a plethora of art galleries and museums that can hold their own on a global scale. Perhaps the most famous–and most frequented– is the Parrish Art Museum.
The museum, which relocated from Southampton to Water Mill in 2012 to accommodate a growing collection and need for modern climate control, began as an homage to the plein-air painters who began to flock eastward with the extension of the Long Island Rail Road to Southampton in the late 1800s. It’s since grown into a famed museum featuring more than 3,000 works from artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Jackson Pollock, William Merritt Chase, Fairfield Porter, Eric Fiscal, Jane Freilicher, Larry Rivers, Childe Hassam, James Whistler, Elizabeth Peyton, Dan Flavin, Chuck Close, John Chamberlain, and dozens more.
The museum is not so much themed around a specific era or style than a subject, the common thread amongst Parrish Art Museum’s collections being the beauty of the East End, something any Hamptons-going New Yorker can appreciate. Even better, the subject-centric museum caters to a wide range of aesthetics, and houses works ranging from American Impressionism to Contemporary Art.
Besides the permanent collections, The Parrish Art Museum offers world-class curated and juried exhibitions on a rotating basis. For summer 2016, exhibitions include “Radical Seafaring,” “Platform” by Jonah Bokaer, along with a number of special curations culled from the museum’s permanent collections.
Spend your next rainy Hamptons Saturday at the Parrish Art Museum, and we promise you won’t even miss the beach. For more information visit parrishart.org.