WATER MILL, NY – The Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill is currently hosting "Sean Scully: The Albee Barn, Montauk," a significant exhibition tracing the enduring influence of a pivotal 1982 residency on the acclaimed artist. Running from May 11 to September 21, 2025, the show features over 70 works, highlighting how a single month spent in Montauk profoundly shaped Scully's artistic trajectory.
The exhibition centers on Scully's transformative fellowship at The Edward F. Albee Foundation in Montauk during the summer of 1982. This period, spent painting in the "Albee Barn," provided Scully with the freedom to create small, multi-panel works on found wood, directly responding to the local light and environment. According to the Parrish Art Museum, this experience was decisive for Scully, who was raised in urban environments, bringing him closer to nature and enriching the relationship between his abstract paintings and the natural world.
The Wall Street Journal highlighted the exhibition, stating in a recent tweet, "An exhibition at the Parrish Art Museum traces the continuing influence of place on the artist Sean Scully through more than 70 works, including paintings from a transformative 1982 residency." This residency marked a crucial moment in Scully's break from pure Minimalism, as he began to incorporate metaphor, subjective colors, and complex relationships into his abstract forms. Fifteen of the original 1982 Montauk paintings are reunited for the first time in this exhibition, presented near their site of inspiration.
Sean Scully, an Irish-born American artist, is renowned globally for his abstract paintings, often characterized by interlocking bands of color and textured surfaces. His work is held in major museum collections worldwide, and he has been twice nominated for the Turner Prize. Scully's career, spanning over five decades, demonstrates a consistent exploration of emotion and structure within abstraction.
The Parrish Art Museum's executive director, Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, Ph.D., noted the long-held aspiration to bring Scully’s Montauk series to the East End. The exhibition also includes later works such as selections from his "Wall of Light" and "Landline" series, alongside newly debuted "Wall Landlines" and "Tower" paintings, showcasing the lasting impact of his Montauk experience on his evolving oeuvre.