PARADISE LOST

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Sculpture @ Sylvester Manor is delighted to announce its second annual summer exhibition, Paradise Lost, an ambitious outdoor presentation of sculpture and installation art sited in the historic landscape of Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island, NY. Featuring 22 artists working on the East End of Long Island, the exhibition opens June 14 and runs through September 14, 2025.

Following the resounding success of the inaugural 2024 exhibition—which drew over 2,500 visitors—Sculpture @ Sylvester Manor has been awarded a $25,000 grant from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), recognizing the project’s cultural significance, its illumination of the entwined Indigenous, European, and West African histories rooted in this landscape, and its continued resonance with artistic imagination today.

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“We’re thrilled to be able to announce the second sculpture exhibition at Sylvester Manor, particularly after the success of last year’s exhibition” said Stephen Searl, Executive Director of Sylvester Manor. “The exhibition will again be free and open to the public, drawing people from around the region to experience art and culture in the context of this nationally significant and culturally important historic site.”

Curated by Tom Cugliani, a veteran of the contemporary art world, the 2025 exhibition draws inspiration from John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, a retelling of the biblical Fall of Man exploring the themes of free will, obedience, rebellion, pride, the nature of good and evil, and redemption through grace. As Cugliani explains, “The complexity of Milton’s poem both reflects and is contextualized by the political, social, economic and religious upheaval of the mid-17th century. The nature of the turbulent events that brought Nathaniel Sylvester to Shelter Island in 1651 continue to figure powerfully in the moment we are living in today”.

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Sylvester Manor | 80 North Ferry Road | Shelter Island, NY | 11964 www.sylvestermanor.org | 631.749.0626

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Highlights

● Jeffrey Pegram, musician and educator of the Shinnecock Nation, will contribute a series ofimmersive audio installations accessible by QR Code throughout the grounds. These ceremonial chants echo Indigenous beliefs in the sacred stewardship of land, asserting that it is bestowed by the creator—not owned or transferred. Pegram has presented traditional and contemporary Indigenous music widely to critical acclaim in the US and internationally.
● Erica-Lynn Huberty will install a text work of quotations from Paradise Lost, inscribed on tags of fabric woven through the historic boxwood hedges of Sylvester Manor’s formal garden, purported to be the earliest boxwoods brought from Europe in the 16th century. Siting this piece in a tunnel of boxwoods reimagines Paradise Lost as a journey through the timeless cycles of human experience: creation, rebellion, disgrace, and redemption – elements of the human condition that remain profoundly relevant.Curator-led walking tours with Tom Cugliani will be offered on alternating Sundays throughout the summer. Visitors may also enjoy a self-guided experience by downloading the Paradise Lost, Sculpture @ Sylvester Manor self-guided Walking Tour app, which will be available through a QR code posted on site and on the website upon the exhibition opening. Admission is free to the public.

Participating Artists

Ariel Adkins, Bill Albertini, Roisin Bateman, Marta Baumiller, Catherine Brigham and the Students of the Shelter Island Union Free School, Pam Brown, Walter Channing, Andrea Cote, Pierre Cote, Sherry Davis, Robin Gianis, Sandi Haber Fifield, Erica-Lynn Huberty, Ella Mahoney, Stephanie Needham, Jeffrey Pegram, Ned Smyth, Aurelio Torres, Allan Wexler, Annemarie Waugh & Michelle Whittaker & Neisha Terry Young, Marianne Weil, B. Wurtz

For more information, to download the app, or to reserve your spot for a curator led walking tour, please visit: www.sylvestermanor.org

Digital catalogue from 2024 available here.

Sylvester Manor | 80 North Ferry Road | Shelter Island, NY | 11964 www.sylvestermanor.org | 631.749.0626

About Sylvester Manor: Once the ancestral home of Native Americans with traditions of hunting, fishing and farming, Sylvester Manor from 1651 to 2014 was home to eleven generations of its original European settler family, reflecting a remarkably intact history of America’s evolving tastes, economies and landscapes. Its timeline encompasses a slaveholding provisioning plantation, an Enlightenment-era farm, and a pioneering food industrialist’s estate, through to its present day iteration as an organic educational farm and historic site of conscience. Sylvester Manor’s mission is to Preserve, Cultivate and Share its history and artifacts, landmark buildings and 236 acres of grounds.

For more information, visit www.sylvestermanor.org.

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