Former Parrish Curator Discusses a Landmark Exhibition

In celebration of the Parrish Art Museum’s 125th anniversary, on Friday, June 30, at 6 p.m., Donna De Salvo, the museum’s former Robert Lehman Curator will discuss her landmark exhibition, “A Museum Looks at Itself: Mapping Past and Present at the Parrish Art Museum, 1897-1992.”

Shown in 1992 at the Parrish’s original Jobs Lane location in Southampton, the exhibition mined the museum’s history from its early beginnings as the Art Gallery of Southampton, to the Eurocentrism and politics of its founder Samuel Longstreth Parrish, and through its redirected focus on works by American artists.

Through the museum’s archives and collection, plus artist interventions, “A Museum Looks at Itself” attempted to reveal the often-concealed biases and beliefs that can shape an institution’s programming with the ultimate goal of eliciting change. Writing in a 1992 Art in America story, art historian Kenneth E. Silver said of the exhibition, “As staged by curator Donna De Salvo with contributions by artists Fred Wilson and Judith Barry, the exhibition explored issues involving esthetic choice and period taste, notions of art-historical authenticity and America’s onetime cultural inferiority complex as well as questions of class consciousness and racism. Not bad for a provincial museum.”

Through the lens of her exhibition mounted three decades ago, De Salvo will discuss how these themes continue to resonate today. The program, which includes a discussion with De Salvo and Corinne Erni, Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman, chief curator, art and education, is the second of a series of conversations that delve into the Parrish’s rich and storied history.

Admission to this talk in the museum’s Lichtenstein Theater is $16 ($5 for museum members, $12 for seniors and free for students and children). The Parrish Art Museum is at 279 Montauk Highway, Water Mill. Visit parrishart.org for details.