PARRISH ART MUSEUM AWARDED $100,000 GRANT
FROM THE ROBERT DAVID LION GARDINER FOUNDATION
FOR A NEW DIGITAL INITIATIVE: PARRISH GATEWAY
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Parrish Gateway will help create greater access to the Museum’s vast store of information on
art and artists of the East End
Water Mill Group, 1961. Tibor de Nagy, Jane Wilson, Roland Pease, Arthur Gold, Rudy Burckhardt, Yvonne Jacquette, Robert Fizdale, Jane Freilicher, Joe Hazan. Photo: John Jonas Gruen
The Parrish Art Museum has been awarded a 16-month, $100,000 grant from The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation for Parrish Gateway—an initiative that will provide greater access to the Parrish Art Museum’s extensive historical scholarship on East End artists as well as to the Museum’s permanent collection, archives, and publications. Through a new, robust, user-friendly digital database, Parrish Gateway will enable the Museum to share a trove of important, and in some cases exclusive, information about the region’s rich artistic legacy with scholars, historians, curators, teachers, students, and the general public. The project epitomizes a core component of the Museum’s mission to illuminate the unique history of Long Island’s East End through research, scholarship, and interpretation of the world-renowned artists the region has nurtured.
“The Parrish is profoundly grateful for this wonderful opportunity to partner with The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation,” said Parrish Deputy Director Chris Siefert. “Parrish Gateway is a perfect synergy of our missions and dedication to sharing and building on the remarkable history and artistic legacy of Long Island. This is a long-hoped-for initiative at the Museum, and we are excited to be able to start work and make it happen, thanks to this generous funding from the Gardiner Foundation.”
Kathryn M. Curran, Executive Director of the Gardiner Foundation said: “The mapping aspect of this site will place artists regionally throughout Long Island. This project will allow our Long Island historical societies to see the body of an artist’s work and how it impacted their own communities. It will be, in essence, a tool for curators, historians, and educators.”
The Gardiner Foundation focusses on highlighting and celebrating the significant cultural heritage of the region. Parrish Gateway will offer easy exploratoryonline access to this rich cultural history as well as to the Museum’s images, narratives, and scholarly research. The project, which begins in September 2017 and is scheduled to launch in the fall of 2018, will meet the need of today’s users and anticipate those of the future by merging extensive resources on American art and regional history into a single database that is digitally accessible across broad platforms. Parrish Gateway will provide these digital resources to other museums and historical societies (regional and national) that wish to contextualize their areas of focus within social and cultural history of art and artists.
The Parrish began to digitize its collection, including 593 objects from the William Merritt Chase and Fairfield Porter archives, in 2005 with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). That initiative created East End Stories, a database of information on more than 400 artists, beyond the Museum’s collection, who worked in the region from the 19th-century to the present. In 2010, East End Stories was expanded to include another 347 artists and a new feature was added: georeferences that map artwork and artists to East End locations. Parrish Gateway will enable users to access these and other important art-historical assets.
The Parrish Art Museum’s educational programming is supported, in part, by Fiona and Stanley Druckenmiller, George P. Mills, Long Island Community Foundation, H. Peter Haveles Jr., May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, The John J. McDonnell and Margaret T. O’Brien Foundation, Bobbie Braun/The Neuwirth Foundation, Patricia and David Rung, Town of Southampton, and The Walji Family. The Museum’s exhibitions and programs are made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
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Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation
The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation was founded in Hamptons Bays, in 1987 with the mission to educate and inform the general public in Suffolk County concerning the culture, art, and tradition of the locality; to cultivate, foster, and promote interest in, and understanding and appreciation of the societal heritage of Suffolk County; to encourage and sponsor the creation and perpetuation by historical societies of collections and repositories of documents and artifacts that represent local heritage and traditions; and to sponsor and encourage preservation, restoration, and exhibition by historical societies of historical buildings, homes, and facilities. The Foundation was named for Robert David Lion Gardiner, who had a personal passion for New York history and was the 16th Lord of the Manor of Gardiner’s Island, owned by the Gardiner family and their descendants since 1939.
Inspired by the natural setting and artistic life of Long Island’s East End, the Parrish Art Museum illuminates the creative process and how art and artists transform our experiences and understanding of the world and how we live in it. The Museum fosters connections among individuals, art, and artists through care and interpretation of the collection, presentation of exhibitions, publications, educational initiatives, programs, and artists-in-residence. The Parrish is a center for cultural engagement, an inspiration and destination for the region, the nation, and the world.
www.parrishart.org
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