Three Can't-Miss Hamptons Art Exhibitions to See this Weekend

Out for an art-filled weekend in the Hamptons? Here are just three can’t-miss shows to check out:

Guild Hall’s 80th Annual Artist Members Exhibition—the oldest non-juried museum exhibition on Long Island and one of the few non-juried exhibitions still offered—opens Saturday, April 14 and runs through Saturday, May 19. This community-centered exhibition is an opportunity to celebrate the artists who live and work right here on the East End. In total, this year’s lively and vibrant exhibition features 383 local artists from every level, exhibiting more than 400 works in every medium.

Prizes will be awarded in several categories at the Opening Night Reception on Saturday, April 14 from 5–7 p.m., which is open to Guild Hall members. The prizes include Top Honors, Best Abstract, Best Representational, Best Photograph, and Best Work on Paper, Best Mixed Media, Theo Hios Landscape Award, and Honorable Mentions. The winner of the Top Honor award will receive a one-person exhibition in the Spiga Gallery. This year’s guest juror is Connie H. Choi, Associate Curator of the Permanent Collection at The Studio Museum in Harlem.

On Saturday, April 28 at 3 p.m. art admirers will have the opportunity to meet the winners in person at Guild Hall. In addition, three of Guild Hall’s Museum Mondays programs will also be devoted to the Members Exhibition. Museum Director Christina Mossaides will discuss some of her favorites pieces on display on Monday, April 30 from noon–1 p.m. Guild Hall’s Executive Director Andrea Grover will do the same on Monday, May 7 and Curatorial Assistant Casey Dalene will give the final discussion on Monday, May 14.

The Annual Guild Hall Artist Member Exhibition has often been referred to as the opening of the Art Season on the East End. So get out there and support your local artists. The museum is open Mondays, Fridays and Saturday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m. and Sundays noon–5 p.m. Guild Hall Museum 158 Main Street, East Hampton. 631-324-0806, guildhall.org.

One of the artists featured in the Guild Hall show above—Sag Harbor folk artist Jeanelle Myers—has a solo exhibition up in Sag Harbor’s beautiful and historic John Jermain Memorial Library at 201 Main Street through April 29. This is a rare showing of a wide range of this artist’s work. Be sure to see all three floors to take in the entire exhibition of haunting and beautiful assemblage boxes, fabric collages and figures. The interconnectedness of these seemingly disparate works is brilliantly curated by staffer Susan Blumenkrantz. The more you look the more you discover in these intriguing pieces which have a strong sense of nature, history and storytelling.

These creations, from a time that never was, demand reverence for the handmade and the offbeat. Dan’s Papers Stacy Dermont once summed up Myer’s approach to art by reflected that, “if Joseph Cornell and Henry Darger had the same mother she would be Jeanelle Myers.” The library is open every day, call 631-725-0049 for details or visit johnjermain.org.

Meanwhile, in Bridgehampton, the new exhibition at The White Room Gallery, Element of Surprise, brings together genuinely surprising elements from the voices of three featured artists—Nikki Codis, Nicholas Down and Jackie Fuchs. In this exhibition ideas deal with attraction and repulsion; whimsical images present like a freeze-frame in a movie; and metaphorical spaces somewhere between the real and the imagined are created. The White Room Gallery, 2415 Main Street, Bridgehampton. 631-237-1481, thewhiteroom.gallery.

For more art happenings in the Hamptons visit DansPapers.com.