Parrish Art Museum: ‘Sean Scully: The Albee Barn, Montauk’, May 11 – September 21, 2025

Parrish Art Museum Presents 2025 Exhibition

Sean Scully: The Albee Barn, Montauk

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May 11–September 21, 2025

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Sean Scully’s First Museum Exhibition Exploring His Transformative Time in Montauk

Sean Scully (b. 1945). Comoro, 1982, oil on wood, 11 ½ x 19 inches. Collection of the Artist.

© Sean Scully. Courtesy of the Artist.

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The Parrish Art Museum is pleased to introduce Sean Scully: The Albee Barn, Montauk, 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 moment in the artist’s career.

Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, Executive Director of the Parrish Art Museum said, “It has been a long-held aspiration to bring Sean Scully’s Montauk series to the East End, and I am thrilled to see that vision realized at the Parrish. A single month spent in the Albee Barn, Montauk, on the East End of Long Island in the summer of 1982 became a pivotal moment and place for Sean Scully. It marked his first intimate encounter with nature, having been raised in highly urban environments—and his time in Montauk was decisive. The exhibition Sean Scully: The Albee Barn, Montauk features over 70 works spanning 1981 to 2024, telling the story of Sean’s extraordinary life and how far-reaching that experience of nature would become. A month in Montauk shaped not only Sean Scully’s development as an artist, but also, by extension, the entire field of geometric abstraction—of which he is now the preeminent contemporary figure.”

In 1981, Scully broke from Minimalism with his manifesto painting Backs and Fronts, embracing color and space with visible brushstrokes liberated from the constraints of taped lines. The following summer, his time in Montauk marked his first profound encounter with nature. Raised in urban environments, Scully found the natural surroundings transformative. Working in the Albee Barn, he created small multi-panel works on found wood, responding directly to the shifting light and landscape—a foundational approach that has shaped his practice ever since.

Reminiscing about his time at the Albee Residency, Sean Scully acknowledged, “I’d already made the change in my work, in my breaking from Minimalism, by including metaphor, subjective colors, difficult relationships, abutment, and different titles; however, the time I spent in Montauk brought me closer to nature and enriched the relationship between my abstract paintings and the natural world.”

Interior view of ‘The Barn’ at the Edward F. Albee Foundation, Montauk, 1982. Photo: Courtesy of the Artist.

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This exhibition brings together 15 of the original 1982 Montauk paintings for the first time since their creation, presented near the very site of their inspiration. In total, Sean Scully: The Albee Barn, Montauk features over 70 works, chosen in collaboration with the artist to emphasize their connection to landscape and light. Key paintings include Backs and Fronts (1981), Heart of Darkness (1982), selections from the Wall of Light series last shown in New York at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2006, the Landline series previously exhibited at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 2018 and the Wadsworth Atheneum in 2019, as well as the newly debuted Wall Landlines and Tower paintings—a monumental series started in 2024.

“At Northern Trust, we believe in the enduring power of art to nurture reflection, connection and innovation, as evidenced by our long-standing commitment to the arts in the communities we serve,” said Carlos J. Arrizurieta, President of the Northeast Region for Northern Trust Wealth Management. “We are proud to support Sean Scully: The Albee Barn, Montauk—an exhibition that not only highlights Scully’s profound connection with Long Island, but also the power of nature to transform and inspire.”

(Left): Sean Scully (b. 1945). Elder, 1982, oil on board, 18 x 15 inches. Collection of the Artist. © Sean Scully. Courtesy of the Artist.

(Center): Sean Scully (b. 1945). Wall of Light Oceanic, 2005, oil on linen, 83 ⅞ x 71 ¾ inches. Private Collection. © Sean Scully. Courtesy of the Artist. (Right): Sean Scully (b. 1945). Landline Yellow Bar, 2015, oil on aluminum, 85 x 75 inches. Private Collection. © Sean Scully. Courtesy the Artist.

A fully illustrated exhibition catalogue, published by Hatje Cantz, will feature an introduction by exhibition curator and Parrish Executive Director, Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, Ph.D., essays by Deborah Solomon, Steven Henry Madoff, and Kaitlin Halloran, an interview between Scully and Ramírez-Montagut, a complete plate section, and a detailed chronology highlighting the artist’s life and career achievements.

Sean Scully: The Albee Barn, Montauk is organized by Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, Ph.D., Executive Director, with Kaitlin Halloran, Associate Curator and Publications Manager.

Sean Scully: The Albee Barn, Montauk exhibition catalog cover.

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Sean Scully

Sean Scully’s (b. 1945) work is in the collections of major museums worldwide. In 2014, he became the first Western artist to have a career-length retrospective in China. He was named International Artist of the Year in Hong Kong in 2018. Notable solo exhibitions include Landline at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., which traveled to the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; Landline and Other Works at the De Pont Museum, Tilburg, Netherlands; Sea Star at the National Gallery, London; Vita Duplex at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Germany; and a presentation of sculptures at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, England. His figurative series Eleuthera was shown at the Albertina, Vienna; while retrospectives Long Light at Villa e Collezione Panza, Italy, and Human at San Giorgio Maggiore during the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019 further solidified his impact.

The last five years have been marked by the major fifty-year career retrospective Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in the USA, previously shown at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas in 2021, alongside multiple solo exhibitions and retrospectives worldwide, and the inclusion in 2024 of the Sean Scully: A Romantic Geometry of Colors room, in the collection of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France. In New York, Broadway Shuffle, an outdoor exhibition of seven sculptures, ran along the Broadway Malls in Manhattan, New York, July 2024 – March 2025. This year, major solo exhibitions have opened at the Daegu Art Museum, South Korea; Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera, Casa Milà, Barcelona, Spain; and the Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg, Germany. Scully lives and works in New York, Bavaria, and Aix-en-Provence.

Sean Scully (b. 1945). Backs and Fronts, 1981, oil on linen and canvas, 96 x 240 inches. Private Collection. © Sean Scully. Courtesy of the Artist.

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Exhibition Support

Sean Scully: The Albee Barn, Montauk is presented with the generous support of Northern Trust, and Fiona & Eric Rudin. We are also grateful for the support of Lisson Gallery; Michael Hilti; Catherine and Bill Carmody; Susan and Timothy Davis; Yanina Fuertes; Linda Hackett and Melinda Hackett/ CAL Foundation; Amy and Steven Horowitz; Sandy and Stephen Perlbinder; Steven Pesner, in memory of his wife Michéle; Jennifer Rice and Michael Forman; Herman Goldman Foundation; Martha McLanahan; Lauren and Steven P. Schwartz; Robin and Frederic Seegal; Alexandra Stanton and Sam Natapoff; and Sedgwick A. Ward.

The Parrish Art Museum’s programs are made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and by the property taxpayers from the Southampton School District and the Tuckahoe Common School District.

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The Parrish Art Museum is a place to discover and connect with artists and art with a focus on the rich creative legacy of the East End and its global impact on the art world. Inspired by the natural setting and historical artistic community of Long Island’s East End, the Parrish Art Museum celebrates its legacy through a distinctive contemporary lens and socially conscious global context. The Parrish illuminates the creative process and how art, architecture, and design transform our experiences and our communities, and how we relate to the world. Access to relevant cultural engagement, artistic inspiration, a natural environment, and architectural ingenuity characterizes the Museum experience as a unique destination for the region, the nation, and the world.