The Gardener is a film that reflects upon the meaning of gardening and its impact on our lives. Co-presented with Hamptons Doc Fest and in conjunction with  Landscape Pleasures, the documentary features the influential gardener and plantsman Frank Cabot shortly before his passing at the age of 86. Cabot recounts his personal quest for perfection at Les Quatre Vents, his 20-acre English style garden and summer estate, which he opened to a film crew for the first time in 2009.

Nestled amid the rolling hills of the Charlevoix County in Quebec, Les Quatre Vents has become one of the world’s foremost private gardens. Created over the course of 75 years and three generations, this horticultural masterpiece of the 21st century is an enchanted place of beauty and surprise. Through remarks by Cabot and his family, and with the participation of gardening experts and writers, the film looks back at this remarkable man’s personal story and the artistic philosophy that gave birth to one of the greatest gardens in the world.

About the Director

Sébastien Chabot (b. 1976, Sainte-Florence, Quebec) is a Canadian writer, cinematographer, and producer, who published his debut novel Ma mère est une marmotte in 2004. He was awarded the Prix Jovette-Bernier in 2006 for his sequel, L’Angoisse des poulets sans plumes, and was recently shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for French-language fiction for the novel Noir métal. Discussing The Gardener in a feature article in Point of View Magazine, Chabot said that working with Frank Cabot was about cultivating a film that would be as finely crafted as the garden it depicts. “Doing a personal movie about one’s personal garden might be the best way to reveal someone.” Chabot received his education at the Université du Québec à Rimouski and the Université du Québec à Montréal. He is a professor of literature at the Cégep de Rimouski.

About Alicia Whitaker

Alicia Whitaker is an executive leadership coach and consultant who has worked to support her gardening habit for decades. A home gardener and active participant in the East End gardening community, she is past president (2019-2021) and long-time board member of the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons, and recently joined the Board of Directors of the Westhampton Garden Club where she serves as Chair of Horticulture and member of the Pollinator Team responsible for a fledgling Pollinator Garden at the Quogue Library. She is co-author, with Betsy Pinover Schiff, of The Sidewalk Gardens of New York (Monacelli Press, 2016) which describes the many ways NYC has become a greener city in the past two decades. Whitaker became a Master Gardener in 2021 after completing a course offered by Cornell Cooperative Extension Service. She holds a BA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

About Thackston Crandall

Thackston Crandall is a licensed Landscape Architect and Senior Associate with LaGuardia Design Group, located in Watermill NY and NYC. As a member of the LDG team, Thackston enjoys collaborating with colleagues and clients on a range of projects including residential, commercial, and cultural landscapes. Thackston received a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from Clemson University and a Master of Landscape Architecture from Cornell University.

Friday Nights are made possible, in part, by Presenting Sponsor:

Additional support provided by Weill Cornell Medicine – Southampton and The Corcoran Group

Conversation and Q & A in the Lichtenstein Theater with Alicia G. Longwell, Ph.D., Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Chief Curator, Art and Education and Larissa Goldston, Director of Universal Limited Art Editions

Exhibition open April 24 to July 10, 2022

Organized in four thematic sections, An Art of Changes follows Jasper Johns (American, born 1930) through the years as he revises and recycles key motifs, including the American flag, numerals, and the English alphabet, which he describes as “things the mind already knows.” Some works explore the artist’s tools, materials, and techniques. Others delve into signature aspects of his distinctive mark-making, including flagstones and hatch marks, while later pieces teem with autobiographical imagery. The prints will be augmented by a small selection of paintings and sculptures, underscoring Johns’s fascination with the changes that occur when an image is reworked in another medium.

https://parrishart.org/exhibitions/jasper-johns-an-art-of-changes/

A conversation with executive producer Marquise Stillwell; producer, cinematographer, and designer/animator Petter Ringbom; and co-producer Ashley Lukasik; moderated by András Szántó, author, cultural strategist, and Art Basel Conversations host. Taking place before the in-person screening of 

The New Bauhaus - The life and legacy of Moholy-Nagy

2019, Documentary, 85 minutes

Director/Producer: Alysa Nahmias

In 1937, László Moholy-Nagy came to Chicago to start the New Bauhaus, an art institute that aimed to pioneer the development and dissemination of modern design. The film’s narrative weaves original interviews with archival footage, voiceover, and stylized filming featuring Hans-Ulrich Obrist. The result is a new perspective view of a man who was ahead of his time and is increasingly relevant in today’s contemporary art and design discourses. Following recent retrospectives of Moholy-Nagy’s work at major museums, this film offers a more accessible and intimate, emotional journey through his life and his work as an artist, designer, visionary, and teacher. Moholy-Nagy believed that designing was “not a profession but an attitude,” he brought together art students and design students—something unheard of at the time—and challenged them to look at the world differently.

A conversation with Senior Curator Corinne Erni, Filmmaker and Artist Jill Magid, and Dia Art Foundation Associate Curator Matilde Guidelli-Guidi. Before the screening of The Proposal, co-presented with Hamptons Doc Fest, in collaboration with Dia.

The Proposal

Known as “the artist among architects”, Luis Barragán is among the world’s most celebrated architects of the 20th century. Upon his death in 1988, much of his work was locked away in a Swiss bunker, hidden from the world’s view. In an attempt to resurrect Barragán’s life and art, boundary redefining artist Jill Magid creates a daring proposition that becomes a fascinating artwork in itself–a high-wire act of negotiation that explores how far an artist will go to democratize access to art.

About Jill Magid

Friday Nights are made possible, in part, by Presenting Sponsor:

Additional support provided by The Corcoran Group and Sandy and Stephen Perlbinder.

Inspiring lecture by award-winning horticulturist, landscape designer, photographer, and lecturer, Patrick Cullina.

Patrick Cullina

Patrick Cullina is an award-winning horticulturist, landscape designer, photographer, lecturer, and organizational consultant with more than twenty-five years of experience in the landscape field. He runs a design and consulting business with projects across the country  that is dedicated to the innovative and sensitive integration of plants and materials into a diverse range of compelling designs—drawing inspiration from both the natural world and constructed environments alike. Previously, he was the founding Vice President of Horticulture and Park Operations for New York City’s High Line; the Vice President of Horticulture, Operations and Science Research at Brooklyn Botanic Garden; and the Associate Director of the Rutgers University Gardens in affiliation with the school’s Department of Landscape Architecture. Throughout his career, he has lectured throughout the U.S. and abroad for universities, public gardens, garden clubs, horticultural organizations, museums, libraries and professional organizations on the subjects of plants, living environments, horticulture, landscape design, landscape maintenance and the urban experience.

Landscape Pleasures 2021 is made possible, in part, with support from Grand Patrons Lillian and Joel Cohen and Whitmores; Grand Sponsors Linda Hackett and Melinda Hackett/ CAL Foundation, LaGuardia Design Group and Summerhill Landscapes; and Grand Participants Gardeneering/Tish Rehill, Elizabeth and David Granville-Smith, and Piazza Horticultural. Hamptons Cottages & Gardens is the media sponsor.

Inspiring lecture by renowned landscape designer, Deborah Nevins.

The Stavros Niarchos Park in Athens

Join Chief Curator Alicia Longwell and abstract painter Lucien Smith, whose 10 large-scale paintings from his 2013 Southampton Suite are currently on view, for an illustrated talk.

Lucien Smith (b.1989) is best known for his process-based works that employ both accidental and improvisational marks to create loose, all-over compositions. Organized by Alicia Longwell, Lucien Smith: Southampton Suite brings the artist’s Rain Paintings series to conclusion with the 10 large-scale paintings created in a plein air studio that he constructed on the East End during the summer of 2013. With the 9 x 7 ft acrylic on unprimed canvas Southampton Suite paintings, the artist created an immersive environment that continues his quest to “. . .replicate a natural process with manmade tools.” The ten works on view here from 2013 have never been shown as a group.

Smith’s paintings, made by filling an empty fire extinguisher with paint and spraying the canvas, became widely known soon after his 2011 graduation from Cooper Union. What appealed to Smith was the way he was able to replicate a natural process—rain—with a manmade tool. For the first Rain Paintings series, Murmur of the Heart, he used blue and yellow paint; after this initial investigations he began to use a monochromatic approach, taking a cue from the traditional depiction of rain in Japanese woodblock prints.

Friday Nights at the Parrish are made possible, in part, by Presenting Sponsor:

Additional support provided by Sandy and Stephen Perlbinder.

April 24th, 2020

In an article published recently in artnet.com that prompted responses from around the world, cultural strategist András Szántó posited the urgency of museums to lead the way to reopen as soon as is safely possible, providing a haven in a time of trauma and disruption and signaling a return to normalcy.

In this live-stream conversation with Parrish Art Museum Director Terrie Sultan, Szántó discusses the critical need for the arts in periods of crisis, a practical plan for the reopening of museums, and the long-term changes in their role and function.

About András Szántó

Szántó is an influential writer and researcher in the fields of art, media, cultural policy, arts sponsorship, and philanthropy. Author and editor of numerous books and research reports, he has been a contributor to The Art Newspaper, The New York Times, Artforum, and many leading publications. András has taught art business and marketing at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art and served as director of the National Arts Journalism Program and the NEA Arts Journalism Institute, both at Columbia University.

Friday Nights at the Parrish are made possible, in part, by Presenting Sponsor: Bank of America

Additional support provided by The Corcoran Group and Sandy and Stephen Perlbinder.

April 10th, 2020

Last September, the Parrish Art Museum invited OptoSonic Tea to present an evening-length performance, featuring 18 of the world’s most innovative video and sound artists to interact with the architecture and landscape of the Museum. The durational and site-specific group improvisation featured visual artists performing live in different areas outside of the Museum building, while live musicians and sound artists performed coordinated and spatialized works by composer and Diapason Gallery founder/director Michael J. Schumacher.  The spectacle allowed the over 400 visitors to experience the Herzog & de Meuron designed building in entirely new ways.

Corinne Erni, Senior Curator of ArtsReach and Special Projects, hosted a conversation with OptoSonic Tea founders, intermedia artists Katherine Liberovskaya and Ursula Scherrer, about the performance at the Parrish, their work during Coronavirus, and upcoming projects with Sarah Weaver from NowNets Art who joined the conversation. 

OptoSonic Tea was conceived in 2006 as a series of salon-style meetings that explore various forms of live visuals and their interaction with live audio, followed by an informal discussion about the artists’ practices over a cup of green tea.

OptosSonic Tea @ The Parrish was presented on September 27, 2019 and was curated specifically for the Museum’s Platform series.

View highlights from the performance here: https://vimeo.com/379339796

VISUAL ARTISTS included Benton C Bainbridge, Bradley Eros, Andy Guhl, Kit Fitzgerald, Asi Föcker, CHiKA, Chris Jordan (cj), Katherine Liberovskaya, LoVid (Kyle Lapidus and Tali Hinkis), and Ursula Scherrer.

SOUND ARTISTS included Marcia Bassett, Ranjit Bhatnagar, Shelley Hirsch, Laura Ortman, Emma Souharce, Michael J. Schumacher, Keiko Uenishi, and Shane Weeks.

Platform:OptoSonic Tea @ the Parrish was made possible, in part, by the generous support of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, mediaThe foundation inc., and Sandy and Stephen Perlbinder.

Our Friday Night programs at the Parrish are made possible, in part, by presenting sponsor Bank of America, with additional support provided by The Corcoran Group and Sandy and Stephen Perlbinder.

December 14, 2018

The Parrish hosted a special screening of the short film Keith Sonnier - Sketches to Neon, followed by a conversation with filmmaker Lana Jokel, and artist Keith Sonnier. Moderated by Alicia Longwell, Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Chief Curator.

Jokel’s 15 minute pilot illuminates the history and creative process of Sonnier, a pioneering figure in the fields of conceptual, post-minimal, video, and performance art who radically reframed the function of sculpture. Filmed at two locations in the Hamptons, the documentary follows Sonnier and Jokel to a local autobody shop where the artist is transforming a 1950s Oldsmobile into a mobile neon sculpture. The second location is Sonnier’s Bridgehampton studio, where he and Jokel discuss his process of transforming sketches and maquettes into neon works.

Our Friday Night programs at the Parrish are made possible, in part, by presenting sponsor Bank of America, with additional support provided by The Corcoran Group and Sandy and Stephen Perlbinder.