Parrish Art Museum Announces Dynamic 2025 Exhibition Lineup
Featuring Solo Shows by Shirin Neshat, Sean Scully, James Howell, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Nina Yankowitz
WATER MILL, NY—February 12, 2025—The Parrish Art Museum announces its 2025 schedule, featuring solo exhibitions by internationally renowned artists Shirin Neshat, Sean Scully, James Howell, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Nina Yankowitz. These presentations reaffirm the Museum’s commitment to showcasing groundbreaking contemporary artists, while fully utilizing the architectural design of the expansive Herzog & de Meuron-designed galleries at the Museum.
“The Museum’s ambitious 2025 program underscores the Parrish’s commitment to excellence and to presenting artists whose work resonates both locally and globally. This year’s diverse lineup—spanning painting, photography, video, and installation—highlights the dynamic dialogue between artists and themes of place, memory, and our exquisite surroundings on the East End. I am especially excited to introduce Sean Scully’s Montauk series and Shirin Neshat’s deeply personal collection to our community through our planned in-person events and programming,” said Museum Executive Director Mónica Ramírez-Montagut.
Shirin Neshat: Born of Fire | April 20–September 1, 2025
This exhibition marks the artist’s first museum exhibition in the New York area in two decades. It offers a non-linear survey of Neshat’s artistic development, presenting focused installations of four significant bodies of work. These range from her first major photographic works, Women of Allah (1993–97), images inspired by women’s involvement in the Islamic Revolution and Iran-Iraq War, to The Book of Kings (2012), a portrait series that calls on the tradition of Persian epic poetry to address the Arab Spring protest movement. The exhibition will also include more recent projects that present Neshat’s surreal film and video works alongside still photographs, including Land of Dreams (2019), in which the artist turns her attention to exploring American culture from the perspective of an Iranian artist in exile, and The Fury (2022–3), addressing sexual exploitation of female political prisoners.
Though distinct, all four bodies of work are connected by motifs of female empowerment, political resistance, and displacement. Presented together, they reveal how these key themes have evolved throughout Neshat’s artistic journey. The exhibition also features a gallery dedicated to her private collection of work by fellow artists, from friends such as Marina Abramović and Robert Longo to artists based in the Middle East, revealing Neshat’s inspirations and her championship of lesser-known peers, especially from cultures where censorship impedes free expression.
Shirin Neshat: Born of Fire is organized by Corinne Erni, Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Chief Curator, Art and Education, with Scout Hutchinson, Associate Curator of Exhibitions.
Sean Scully: The Albee Barn, Montauk | May 11–September 21, 2025
Sean Scully: The Albee Barn, Montauk is a survey of the artist’s work ranging from 1981 to 2024, exploring his Long Island connection and how a single month spent in Montauk in the summer of 1982 with a fellowship at the Edward F. Albee Foundation became a pivotal place and moment in the artist’s career.
It was in 1981 that Sean Scully broke the hold of Minimalism with his manifesto painting Backs and Fronts. There was a return of color and space. Brushstrokes were now visible, broken free of the constriction of taped lines. But it was the following summer of 1982 spent in Montauk that provided the artist’s first intimate encounter with nature; an experience which, for Sean Scully—brought up in highly urban environments—was decisive. A month painting in the Albee ‘Barn’ gave Scully the freedom to produce small multi-panel works on found scraps of wood as a direct response to the movement of light and the environment around him, an approach that has been a touchstone in Scully’s work ever since.
This exhibition recalls this transformative moment by bringing together 15 of the original 1982 Montauk paintings for the first time since their time in the Barn, in the same geographic region near the site where they were inspired and produced 43 years ago. The exhibition includes over 70 works in total, chosen in collaboration with the artist to highlight the works’ contextual site—landscape and light—while engaging the viewer in the same context. Further rooms are filled with important paintings such as Backs and Fronts 1981, Heart of Darkness 1982, the Wall of Light series last seen in New York at the Metropolitan Museum in 2006, the Landline series last exhibited at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 2018, and the Wadsworth Atheneum in 2019, to the more recent Wall Landlines, and the first Tower painting, a new series of monumental assemblage paintings started in 2024 and exhibited here for the first time.
A fully illustrated corresponding exhibition catalog published by Hatje Cantz will include two interpretive essays, an interview with Scully, a complete plate section, a detailed chronology, and an essay on the role the Albee Foundation has played for artists through the years.
Sean Scully: The Albee Barn, Montauk is organized by Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, Executive Director, with Kaitlin Halloran, Associate Curator and Publications Manager.
“Our upcoming exhibitions offer profound insights into the creative journeys of visionary and widely diverse artists. From Shirin Neshat’s highly stylized videos and photography exploring female experiences in both Islamic and Western culture, Sean Scully’s Montauk-inspired paintings, Howell’s and Sugimoto’s vast explorations of the color grey in painting and photography, to Nina Yankowitz’s boundary-defying multimedia works, each show will spark meaningful conversations and immersive experiences for our audiences,” said Corinne Erni, Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Chief Curator, Art and Education, Parrish Art Museum. “It’s going to be an incredible season filled with exciting art and conversation.”
James Howell | September 14, 2025–February 8, 2026
This exhibition highlights the minimalist works of James Howell (American, 1935–2014), whose paintings, prints, and drawings explore the infinite tonal variations of gray. Inspired by mathematical precision and the changing light of Montauk, Howell’s work balances scientific calculation with artistic intuition. This will be the first exhibition of Howell’s work on Long Island, a place that deeply impacted the artist’s later career. Between 2006 and his death, Howell worked out of his studio in Montauk, where the ever-changing nature of the elements—fog, water, and light—provided fresh inspiration for his decades-long fascination with the seemingly infinite array of grays.
Co-curated by Kaitlin Halloran, Associate Curator and Publications Manager, and Scout Hutchinson, Associate Curator of Exhibitions.
Time Exposed: Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Seascapes | September 14, 2025–February 8, 2026
A presentation of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s (Japanese, b. 1948) black-and-white seascapes for the first time at the Parrish Art Museum. Acquired by the Museum in 2022, the photolithographic series explores Sugimoto’s unwavering interest in the incremental atmospheric changes around vast bodies of water. The Time Exposed project saw Sugimoto use a 19th-century film camera to document the subtle changes in light, fog, and atmosphere.
Curated by Kaitlin Halloran, Associate Curator and Publications Manager.
Nina Yankowitz: In the Out/Out the In | October 5, 2025–February 22, 2026
Organized in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL, this exhibition features 36 works by Nina Yankowitz (American, b. 1946), a boundary-defying artist who has addressed themes of feminism, environmentalism, and social justice through abstraction for nearly six decades. Ranging from pleated and draped canvases to immersive multimedia installations, Yankowitz’s work challenges traditional art categorizations and inspires fresh perspectives on the evolution of artistic expression. Yankowitz began her career in 1960s New York, where she experimented with the material and technical possibilities of canvas, cardboard, paint sprayers, and sewing equipment to create her paintings. A founder of the Heresies Collective (1976-1993), Yankowitz drew on Abstract Expressionism, Process art, and the feminist movement in her work.
Accompanying these exhibitions will be a robust series of related programs, including artist talks, panel discussions, film screenings, educational and family programs, and events designed to enhance visitors’ engagement with the featured artists and their work.
Additional Upcoming 2025 Exhibitions at the Parrish Art Museum
FRESH PAINT: Reggie Burrows Hodges | February 13–June 9, 2025
FRESH PAINT, an ongoing collaboration between the Parrish Art Museum and The FLAG Art Foundation, is a rotating series of single-artwork exhibitions that spotlight new or never-before-exhibited works by both emerging and established artists. FRESH PAINT allows for a more direct response to current issues and cultural movements and is accompanied by two sets of interpretative texts: a commissioned piece by an author, critic, poet, or scholar; and by members of the Parrish Teen Council ARTscope.
FRESH PAINT: Reggie Burrows Hodges is organized by Scout Hutchinson, Associate Curator of Exhibitions at the Parrish, in collaboration with Jon Rider, Director, and Caroline Cassidy, Director of Exhibitions, at FLAG.
2025 Student Exhibition | March 15–April 27, 2025
A longstanding tradition at the Parrish, this annual exhibition showcases the work of over 1,000 young artists (kindergarten to high school) from Eastern Long Island schools. Students demonstrate creativity and technical skills across painting, sculpture, drawing, and photography, with collaborative projects created alongside visiting artist Andrea Cote.
Linear | Amorphous: Geometric Abstractions from the Permanent Collection | September 14, 2025–February 8, 2026
Presenting over 35 works from the Museum’s permanent collection ranging from the late 1950s to 2024, this exhibition aims to highlight the myriad ways artists from different generations employ abstraction to create their compositions. Making use of bright and vivacious colors, artists like Ilya Bolotowsky, Alexander Calder, Theo Hios, and Lee Krasner employ deeply saturated tones to present both rigid and unstructured abstractions. In contrast, works by Stephen Antonakos, Agnes Martin, and Richard Serra all utilize a monochromatic palette to depict their compositions. Highlighting geometric abstractions through works that have not recently been on view, this collection rotation offers new dialogues amongst drawings, paintings, and prints.
Curated by Kaitlin Halloran, Associate Curator and Publications Manager.
