‘I Say Potato’ Explores the Art and History of the East End’s Favorite Tuber

The Bridgehampton Museum presents “I Say Potato” — a multimedia art exhibition exploring the humble tuber’s deep roots in Long Island’s cultural soil. The show opens Friday, June 6, from 6 to 8 p.m. and remains on view through June 28 at the museum’s Nathaniel Rogers House.

This immersive, interdisciplinary art show unearths the profound historical and cultural significance of the potato on the island — especially in the fields and memories of Bridgehampton itself.

Through a diverse array of paintings, sculpture, video and historical ephemera, “I Say Potato” reveals the deep imprint this “ground nut” has left on the local landscape, economy, and imagination. Once growing wild across the East End and later becoming a staple crop of the region’s thriving agricultural industry, the potato is both a literal and symbolic presence in the soil of Long Island.

Curated with a focus on place and memory, the exhibition invites visitors to consider how the potato — planted, harvested, eaten, forgotten — continues to shape the creative output of local artists. Whether consciously or unconsciously, these artists dig into the past and present of their surroundings. In “I Say Potato,” their work converges around the potato not only as food, but as metaphor: for resilience, for transformation, for buried history.

Featuring artists from across the East End working in diverse mediums, “I Say Potato” honors the region’s agricultural heritage while offering fresh perspectives on its contemporary cultural landscape. Visitors can expect both playful and profound takes on this earthy icon — from nostalgic snapshots of potato farming life, to a video work about the word potato itself spoken in 62 languages. It’s about history, root systems, memory and tactile sculptures that invite new sensory understandings of what lies beneath the surface.

“At its essence the exhibition is about memory of place,” says Mark Wilson the show’s curator. “Even if we don’t always recognize it, the legacy of the potato influences how we live, farm, create, and remember.”

The Bridgehampton Museum’s Nathaniel Rogers House is at 2539 Montauk Highway in Bridgehampton. Museum hours are Wednesdays to Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and admission is free. Visit bridgehamptonmuseum.org for details.