The Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill will hold Winter Welcome Day on Saturday, Dec. 6, offering free admission, activities, and an artisan market in the Lichtenstein Theater.
“We do a community day twice a year where we open our doors for free to the entire community. It happens in the summer and again on Dec. 6,” Director of Communications Melanie Wine Tolan said.
The event will run from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with activities including crafting, guided tours of exhibitions, and shopping at both the artisan market and museum shop.
“There’s tons of crafting and walk-throughs with our very educated curatorial team about exhibitions on view,” Tolan said. “The head of our creativity and education programs will be making clothespin dolls, and there will be other guided artmaking connected to the exhibitions on view.”
This will be the third annual Winter Welcome Day.
“Every year it’s growing,” Tolan said.
Children can build with diverse materials and natural objects under the direction of Linda White, play curator with Imagination Play Project.
Visitors can also participate in the FLAG Art Foundation interactive exhibition created by Rudolf Stingel, which covers the lobby’s eastern wall with aluminum-faced insulation boards for visitors’ graffiti-like impressions. According to the museum website, this is the first installation of Stingel’s Celotex panels on Long Island.
Exhibits on display include works by East End artists Nina Yankowitz and the late James Howell. Yankowitz’s retrospective, In the Out/Out, highlights her innovative work, while Howell’s Endless Limits showcases minimalist art.
“The beauty of Winter Welcome Day is that you can come and view all the exhibitions at Parrish Art Museum and also shop for holiday gifts with local crafters and artisans,” Tolan said.
The Lichtenstein Theater will host more than 20 local artists, vendors, and crafters selling goods ranging from jewelry to ceramics. The museum shop will feature books by East End artists, including Artists Choose Parrish and Light, Sand and Sea, as well as seasonal gifts and artmaking supplies.
Food options will include a festive café and three food trucks on site. Activities will extend to the museum grounds, where children can play games in the meadow and families can view outdoor sculptures.
Founded in 1898, the Parrish Art Museum is named after Samuel Longstreth Parrish, who built the first exhibition hall in Southampton Village to house his art collection. Its current 34,400-square-foot location at 279 Montauk Highway in Water Mill opened in 2012 and was designed by Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron.
Winter Welcome Day is supported by The Corcoran Group and Geoffrey Nimmer Landscapes. Participants do not need to register.
For more information, visit the museum’s website.