By Regina Weinreich
Along the walkway at LongHouse Reserve, a golden goddess greets visitors with hollowed eyes, breasts erect. Renée Cox’s Soul Culture Statue, advocating for racial and gender equality, stands as one of several new pieces gracing the art space—with Sean Scully’s 48, a tower of stacked aluminum beds bright in car paint color, and William Kentridge’s Tap, literally a blown-up silver-hued bronze version of a water pipe. Reflecting founder Jack Lenor Larsen’s Asian-inspired vision—gardens and sculpture in serenity and community—LongHouse sets a tone and spirit for the Hamptons arts season with local artists dominating, many having first-time solo exhibitions out East.
This season, Guild Hall features portraits by Arcmanoro Niles: Forgotten Words I Never Got to Say. The artist experiments with traditional skin tones to create inner light. “The show marks the 10-year anniversary of my residency at Guild Hall, bringing together work I have made over the last 17 years,” says Niles, a resident of Springs. “My first solo museum show is at a place where I began.” Also on view at Guild Hall: Re-Paired, mixed-media assemblages by Claire Watson, in which the artist reconstructs and refashions leather garments.
Niles also looks forward to being a part of an upcoming exhibition in Sag Harbor. With a nod to painting traditions honoring the beauty of place, The Church will open This Land: Considering the American Landscape, comprising paintings from neighboring institutions such as the Parrish Art Museum and selections from Dan Flavin’s collection of Hudson River School works.
“Landscapes have become an important part of my practice over the years,” says Niles. “I’m excited to be in a show with painters who have inspired me over the years, especially Richard Mayhew, April Gornik and the Hudson River School artists.”
The Parrish will show part-time Sag Harbor resident Biggers. Exploring the movement of clouds, nebulous forms suspended in interior space, Drift is Biggers’ first solo presentation out East.
For this exhibition, Biggers creates a new large-scale Codex series piece that explores the rich and varied histories of African American communities on the East End of Long Island—from Black whalers in the 19th century, to an Eastville church that was a stop along the Underground Railroad, to the SANS (Sag Harbor Hills, Azurest and Ninevah Subdivisions) neighborhood where Biggers lives, a thriving Black community founded by middle-class families during the post-WWII and Jim Crow eras.
In an adjacent gallery, Biggers creates a new site-specific floor-based sand installation inspired by the form and function of prayer rugs, portable breakdance floors and Japanese Buddhist mandalas. Beginning as a complex geometric pattern, the work’s ephemeral surface will be intentionally altered in a performance that disrupts the design’s hard edges to painterly effect, like clouds at the mercy of winds.
Springs being the epicenter of abstraction, the Arts Center at Duck Creek will show Brent Richardson: Everything and Nothing (June 27 to August 2). The coastal landscape of Montauk, where he lives, paints and surfs, appears in the work as atmosphere, in the monochromatic drawings and oil paintings that feel surreal and futuristic.
Basquiat-inspired, the paintings of Robert Nava will be shown in Southampton, at the Peter Marino Art Foundation. Abstract painters Betty Parsons and Carla Accardi, and Iranian-American artist Y.Z. Kami, complete the summer 2026 schedule till October.
Perhaps the most ambitious of all in a resonant birthday year, Southampton Arts Center displays The Story of America: 1776-2026, on view from May 23 through July 18. Featuring 250 years of American presidential campaign history, including the original flag flown at George Washington’s inauguration at Federal Hall in New York, an Eisenhower Corn Flakes box and paper dresses worn during campaign rallies in the 1960s, the exhibition signals hope for constructive and democratic response to our current political moment.