Permanent Collection: Five and Forward

This November marks the fifth anniversary of the Parrish in its Herzog & de Meuron-designed building in Water Mill. To celebrate this milestone, the annual reinstallation of the Parrish permanent collection presents a closer look at artists whose work represents the ongoing legacy of artists of the East End.

Individual galleries will be dedicated to two of those artists: Abstract Expressionist James Brooks (1906–1992), and Alan Shields (1944–2005), whose work reflects a bold reversal of conventional painting traditions.

Recently, the Museum was entrusted with the most significant collection of works by Brooks and Charlotte Park by the James and Charlotte Brooks Foundation. Twenty paintings on view by Brooks, a key figure in modern American art who lived on the East End for decades, illustrate his embrace of experimentation and risk. Alan Shields: A Stitch in Timeprovides insight into the artist’s life-long engagement with textile and the needle arts, and illustrates how his impetus to take painting down from the wall and the stretcher liberated his artistic process.

In a new initiative, the Museum invited internationally renowned artist Rashid Johnson to act as guest curator to mine the Parrish permanent collection and create a special installation from his unique perspective.

Five and Forward Permanent Collection Exhibition has been made possible, in part, by the generous support of Maren Otto, Barbara Slifka, The Coby Foundation, Ltd., Robert Lehman Foundation, Vivian Haime Barg, Tim and Susan Davis, Garrett and Mary Moran, Charlotte Moss and Barry Friedberg, Jane and David Walentas, Pingree and Donald H. Louchheim, William Talbott Hillman Foundation, Denise LeFrak, Suzanne and Bob Cochran, and Thomas and Clelia Zacharias. Additional support for the Artists Residency project is provided by the Robert Lehman Foundation and the William Talbott Hillman Foundation.