Households in the Southampton and Tuckahoe school districts can visit the Parrish Art Museum free all winter, because their school tax levy helps fund it. This winter, from the Sunday before Thanksgiving through the last week of January, that free pass covers four exhibitions running at once.
At 279 Montauk Highway, an abstraction survey from the fall, a single new painting in the lobby, a pair of East End Impressionists, and a forty-speaker sound installation share the building for roughly nine weeks.
When the Calendars Cross
The overlap begins on November 22, the day Janet Cardiff's sound installation opens, and runs until January 25, when the single-painting FRESH PAINT show closes. In between, these are the shows sharing the building:
| Exhibition | On view through | Where it sits in the season |
|---|---|---|
| Abstract Expressionism: The East End, 1940 to Today | February 14, 2027 | Opened in late September; the anchor of the fall |
| FRESH PAINT: Chase Hall | January 25, 2027 | Opened October 1; free in the lobby's Creativity Lounge |
| William Merritt Chase and Walter Granville-Smith: American Impressionists of the East End | March 21, 2027 | Opens November 14; the longest run of the group |
| Janet Cardiff: The Forty Part Motet | February 14, 2027 | Opens November 22; the artist's first East End exhibition |
From the table, two dates matter most. After January 25 the museum is down to three shows, and after February 14 only the Chase and Granville-Smith exhibition remains, running into late March. Anyone who wants to see the whole season in one afternoon has until late January to do it.
Galleries are open Thursday through Monday from 11 AM to 5 PM and close on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The grounds are open daily during the same hours. The museum's calendar lists closures on Thanksgiving, November 26, on Christmas Day, and on New Year's Day.
The Admission Local Taxpayers Already Covered
Standard adult admission is $20, according to the museum's visit page. For two adults who come back for each new opening this winter, that adds up quickly.
It does not add up at all for residents of the Southampton and Tuckahoe school districts. The Parrish's Resident Pass Program exists because, in the museum's words, those districts' "tax levy supports the mission and work of the Parrish Art Museum." The pass is free for two adults per household and for district employees, and it has to be renewed each year. It covers year-round admission, including exhibitions, talks, and films. To qualify, applicants use their local address and zip code on the museum's web form, and the pass arrives as a digital card. The museum's press releases repeat the funding point, listing the property taxpayers of both districts among the supporters of its programs.
The pass also pays off in this winter's ticketed programs:
- The November 20 curator-led tour of the Abstract Expressionism show costs $30 for adults and $15 for Resident PassHolders.
- The November 21 panel on Chase and Granville-Smith costs $30 for adults and is free for Resident PassHolders.
Children 18 and under and students with a valid ID get in free regardless of where they live. So do members, veterans and active-duty military, SNAP recipients, Shinnecock Nation members, and New York State art teachers. The museum dates its posted Resident Pass terms to February 24, 2026 and says they are subject to change. Check the residentpass page before planning a visit around them.
A Room Built to Be Walked Through
The newest of the four shows is also the one that most rewards repeat visits. The Forty Part Motet, which Cardiff made in 2001, plays the sixteenth-century composer Thomas Tallis's "Spem in Alium" through forty speakers arranged in eight five-voice choirs, carrying fifty-nine individually recorded voices of the Salisbury Cathedral Choir. Because the recording uses children for the soprano parts, twenty-seven boys and girls sing alongside thirty-two adult men.
In the Parrish's announcement, Cardiff describes what she was after:
"I placed the speakers around the room in an oval so that the listener would be able to really feel the sculptural construction of the piece by Tallis. You can hear the sound move from one choir to another, jumping back and forth, echoing each other, and then experience the overwhelming feeling as the sound waves hit you when all of the singers are singing."
The work is designed to be heard from many positions. Visitors walk from speaker to speaker and hear the motet from the place of each individual singer. For a resident with a free pass, that makes it a piece to come back to and stand in a different spot each time. City audiences have heard it at The Met Cloisters in 2013, MoMA PS1 in 2012, and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 2024. This winter it is a short drive away.
The installation is the third exhibition in a partnership with The FLAG Art Foundation, a Manhattan nonprofit. Between 2026 and 2030, the two organizations plan three exhibitions a year across two adjoining galleries at the museum. The galleries that hold the Cardiff piece should keep changing on that schedule for several more winters.
A Painting Back From Conservation
The Chase and Granville-Smith exhibition draws on a collection only the Parrish can offer. The museum's holdings of William Merritt Chase are among the largest public collections of his work. The draw this time is A Comfortable Corner, also known as The Blue Kimono, painted around 1888. It returns to public view for the first time since a major conservation treatment funded by a Bank of America grant and led by Suzanne Siano of Modern Art Conservation, working with Shauna Young and Alice Copley. The exhibition includes photo and video documentation from before, during, and after the treatment.
Walter Granville-Smith offers a local counterpoint to Chase's sunlit views of the Shinnecock Hills. He trained at the Art Students League, worked as a magazine illustrator for Harper's, Scribner's, and Century, and eventually settled in Bellport. His plein-air subjects were the bays, marshes, and barrier beaches of the South Fork's western neighbors. The show closes out PARRISH USA250, the museum's yearlong program marking the nation's semiquincentennial.
On November 21, Associate Curator Kaitlin Halloran, who organized the show, will lead a 4 PM panel with Siano and Young about the conservation work. The member opening reception for the Chase and Cardiff exhibitions takes place the same afternoon, from 3:30 to 5 PM.
The Anchor Show and Its Loans
The exhibition that has been up since September is the deepest of the four. Abstract Expressionism: The East End, 1940 to Today moves from the first and second generations of the 1940s through the 1960s, through later abstraction of the 1970s and 1980s, and into artists working on the East End now. The museum's list includes Lee Krasner, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Perle Fine, James Brooks, Esteban Vicente, Betty Parsons, Syd Solomon, Mary Heilmann, Pat Steir, Stanley Whitney, and Frank Wimberley, with Joan Mitchell named in the press release.
In its review for 27east, the Southampton Press counted roughly 70 works and noted prints in the spine gallery, photographs of artists' studios, and loans used to fill gaps in the museum's own holdings. The review identifies one of those loans as Elaine de Kooning's Sunday Afternoon, Juarez from 1958, lent from the Kenneth C. Griffin Collection. Loans from private collections leave when the show closes, and this one closes February 14.
The smallest show takes the least time. FRESH PAINT: Chase Hall is a single new painting, The Affrilachian Mountains, hung in the lobby's Creativity Lounge and free during regular hours through January 25.
The Season by Date
- November 14: William Merritt Chase and Walter Granville-Smith opens.
- November 20, 3–4 PM: Curator-led tour of the Abstract Expressionism show with Kaitlin Halloran.
- November 21, 4–5 PM: Conservation panel with Halloran, Suzanne Siano, and Shauna Young.
- November 22: Janet Cardiff: The Forty Part Motet opens.
- November 26: Closed for Thanksgiving.
- December 5, 11 AM–5 PM: Winter Welcome Day. Admission is free for everyone, with a holiday market of more than 20 vendors, food trucks, the Parrish Café, and art workshops. Tours start at noon with FRESH PAINT: Chase Hall, at 12:15 PM with Abstract Expressionism, and at 12:45 PM with Chase and Granville-Smith, followed by a Donald Sultan book signing from 1:30 to 2:30 PM. No registration is required.
- December 25 and January 1: Closed.
- January 2, 2–3 PM: Docent-led tour.
- January 25: FRESH PAINT: Chase Hall closes. This is the last day all four shows are on view.
- February 14: The Abstract Expressionism and Cardiff exhibitions close.
- March 21: The Chase and Granville-Smith exhibition closes.
December 5 is the one day this winter when all four shows are free to every visitor, and each of the three larger exhibitions has its own curator-led tour within the same hour.
The cultural institutions that hold Water Mill's winters together are part of what we weigh when advising clients on where and how they spend their time on the East End. If you are thinking about the hamlet beyond its summer season, Heskell Advisors is glad to talk it through. Schedule a confidential market consultation.
