New Additions to the Parrish Art Museum's Collection

The Parrish Art Museum has added several significant artworks to its permanent collection. The acquisitions cover a diverse range of artistic styles and eras and further solidify the museum’s commitment to presenting a comprehensive range of contemporary and historical art.

Among the notable acquisitions are Suzanne McClelland’s (American, b. 1959) recent works, “CUTS (For Never)” and “CUTS (AWAY)” (2023). Most recently, McClelland was included in the Parrish’s 125th anniversary exhibition, “Artists Choose Parrish.” The museum currently holds four works from McClelland’s “Plot” (1999), a mixed media portfolio containing photographs, drawings and prints, documenting a project where she asked friends from all over the country, including East Hampton, to bury four of her drawings. She exhumed them a year later to examine the effects of climate change. McClelland has gifted these new works to the museum. Her work was included in the 1993 and 2014 Whitney Biennials, and she has been included in group exhibitions at many museums. McClelland is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, an Anonymous Was a Woman Award, and a Nancy Graves Foundation grant.

Cornelia Thomsen (German, b. 1970) was raised in East Germany and trained at an early age as a painter at the prestigious school of the Meissen Porcelain Factory. Thomsen’s practice ranges from painting and drawing to printmaking. She settled in New York in 2006. Over the years, Thomsen’s work gradually moved from artisanal representation toward fully realized abstraction. In 2023, she began a series of eight aquatints based on the golden ratio — which applies if the ratio of two quantities is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. In 2024, she created a second series of aquatints, based on the silver ratio or silver mean, which applies if the ratio of the smaller of two quantities is the same as the ratio of the larger quantity to the sum of the smaller quantity and twice the larger quantity.

This set of eight aquatints marks the artist’s first work in the Parrish’s permanent collection. Her work is included in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Tucson Museum of Art, and the Froebel Museum in Bad Blankenburg, Germany. This series is an important work to be acquired as it adds to the museum’s collection of contemporary artists living and working on the East End.

“The museum’s latest acquisitions underscore the Parrish’s dedication to providing our community with engaging works of art that continue to solidify our role as the premier arts education institution in the region,” said Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, the executive director of the Parrish. “We deeply appreciate the unwavering support of our friends and donors, whose generosity has enriched and expanded our permanent collection for generations to come.”

Louis K. and Susan Meisel have donated 20 works to the museum’s permanent collection as part of the Parrish’s most recent set of June acquisitions. Included in this selection are works by Bertrand Meniel, Raphaella Spence, Joyce Stillman-Myers, Clive Head, Robert Gniewek, Richard Mclean, Yigal Ozeri, Jack Lembeck, Theodoros Stamos, Tom Wesselmann, and Alexander Archipenko among others. Notably, the two works by Bertrand Meniel come just before the Parrish is set to open “Beyond Reality: Paintings and Drawings by Bertrand Meniel.” This selection of work marks the first by some in the collection while others build upon their presence in the museum’s holdings.

For more information visit parrishart.org. The Parrish Art Museum is at 279 Montauk Highway in Water Mill.