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Sean Scully (Irish, b. 1945). Elder, 1982, oil on board, 18 x 15 in. Courtesy the Artist.
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Sean Scully (Irish, b. 1945). Solomon, 1982, oil on board, 7 x 12 ¼ in. Courtesy the Artist.
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Interior view of ‘The Barn’ at the Edward F. Albee Foundation, Montauk, 1982. Photo: Courtesy Sean Scully.
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Sean Scully (Irish, b. 1945). Wall of Light Oceanic, 2005, oil on linen, 83 x 71 ¾ in. Courtesy the Artist.
The Parrish Art Museum presents Sean Scully: The Albee Barn, Montauk, a survey of the artist’s work ranging from 1981 to 2024 exploring his Long Island connection and a significant shift in artistic practice that took place during an artist residence in Montauk in 1982. This exhibition recalls Scully’s fellowship at the Edward F. Albee Foundation where he found great inspiration in the natural landscape of the East End, ultimately transforming his palette to include deep, earthy tones, and transformative whites within his now recognizable vocabulary.
Sean Scully: The Albee Barn, Montauk will include over 70 works and provide an opportune moment to present these paintings in the geographic region and near the site where they were inspired and produced some 40 years ago. In collaboration with the artist and his recollection of this transformative moment, the exhibition will highlight the works’ contextual site—landscape and light—providing a new, more wholistic perspective while engaging the viewer in the same context.
A fully illustrated corresponding exhibition catalogue published by Hatje Cantz will include interpretive essays, an interview with Scully, a complete plate section, and detailed chronology.
Sean Scully: The Albee Barn, Montauk is organized by Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, Executive Director, with Kaitlin Halloran, Associate Curator and Publications Manager.
Exhibition Support
Sean Scully: The Albee Barn, Montauk is made possible, in part, thanks to the generous support of Linda Hackett and Melinda Hackett/ CAL Foundation, Herman Goldman Foundation, and a donor who wishes to remain anonymous.
The Parrish Art Museum’s programs are made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and by the property taxpayers from the Southampton School District and the Tuckahoe Common School District.
About Sean Scully
Sean Scully’s (Irish, b. 1945) work is in the collection of virtually every major museum around the world. In 2014 he became the first Western artist to have a career-length retrospective in China. He was awarded the International Artist of the Year Prize in Hong Kong in 2018. His important solo exhibitions include Landline at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., which traveled to the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; Landline and Other Works, De Pont Museum, Tilburg, Netherlands; Sea Star, National Gallery, London; the retrospective Vita Duplex, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Germany; and a presentation of sculptures at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, England. Among other exhibitions are: Eleuthera, new figurative paintings shown at the Albertina, Vienna; the retrospective Long Light at the Villa e Collezione Panza, Varese, Italy; and Human, paintings and sculptures presented at San Giorgio Maggiore for the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. His first exhibition in central Europe, Passenger, at the Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest, traveled to the Benaki Museum, Athens, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb.
A fifty-year career retrospective, Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas, was organized and shown at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and traveled to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, his exhibitions have included Material World, Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen; Painting and Sculpture, Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej, Toruń, Poland; Song of Color, Langen Foundation, Neuss, Germany; and A Wound in a Dance with Love, Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna. Scully lives and works between New York, Bavaria, and Aix-en-Provence.
