Parrish Art Museum

The COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of businesses and organizations across the globe to pause and rethink their strategies, concoct creative solutions to new challenges and raise awareness of this evolution to keep from sinking in the storm that is 2020. Here on the East End, the Parrish Art Museum accomplished this in manner that’s nigh impossible to miss, seeing as the exhibition’s monumental installations stand several feet tall on Montauk Highway in Water Mill.

The inaugural Field of Dreams exhibition, part of the “Art in the Meadow” outdoor initiative, was born out of the pandemic. With museum doors closed since March, and the calendar counting down the days of summer, the Parrish team had to think of something huge to bring guests back to the museum in a safe but exciting way. And after Terrie Sultan stepped down from the position of Parrish director in May, eyes turned to President Mary E. Frank to lead the creative direction of the museum during these critical months.

“You can’t have a summer in the Hamptons without something at the Parrish,” Frank recalls thinking. “Sometimes it’s urgency that drives the best creativity…and we had the urgency of fulfilling our responsibility to our constituency, our membership and our community.”

In an ingenious move to both create a safe, open-air art viewing experience and attract more visitors to the Parrish—including those who’ve mistaken the Parrish for a warehouse or a barn—Frank came up with the museum’s first outdoor exhibition. She called her friend Paul Gray, the principal at Richard Gray Gallery, to inquire about giant sculptures that he may be willing to loan to the museum. She then invited Mary Margaret Jones, President of HargreavesJones, Landscape Architects, to visit the Parrish’s 14-acre grounds and devise a plan for the placement of large-scale installations and walking paths.

Read the full article here.