“An Adventure In The Arts: The Guild Hall Collection” opens November 9 at the Naples Art Institute.
Since 1931, Guild Hall has been a center for arts and civic life in East Hampton, New York. The museum complex combines an art museum, proscenium theater and educational programming under one roof. Over the years, its artist-in-residency program has attracted some of the leading names in the realm of American contemporary art.
Naples Art Institute Executive Director Frank Verpoorten provided additional background.
“Guild Hall was for many years an artist haven, an artist-in-residency-type program, on the east coast of Long Island which, incidentally, had always been home to a lot of the leading contemporary American artists, like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner and Andy Warhol.”
Thomas Moran, Childe Hassam, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein and Chuck Close were also exhibited by Guild Hall.
“Not surprisingly, over the years, Guild Hall built a really formidable collection,” Verpoorten noted.
Guild Hall’s permanent collection now consists of more than 2,400 works by internationally renowned 20th and 21st century artists.
“A representative survey of the works in that collection has been touring the country while the museum is undergoing a renovation and expansion,” Verpoorten added. “We’re fortunate to be able to bring works of this caliber to the community.”
“An Adventure In The Arts” features 72 works by 59 artists, including George Bellows, Lynda Benglis, Chuck Close, Jane Freilicher, Adolph Gottlieb, Jasper Johns, Thomas Moran, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg. Their work spans the period beginning 1878 and concluding in 1994.
Many of these artists lived and worked in the East End, highlighting the tradition of artists in residence since the 1870s.
The exhibition is accompanied by the publication "Guild Hall For All" (2021), which was published in celebration of Guild Hall's 90th anniversary.
“From Impressionism and Abstract Expressionism to the experimental trends of the 1980s and 1990s, this collection explores the evolution of American art through painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, and mixed media,” said Verpoorten.
The exhibition will be on view at Naples Art Institute through January 5, 2025.
MORE INFORMATION:
Guild Hall was designed by architect Aymar Embury II.
It includes a visual art museum with three galleries and the John Drew Theater, a 360-seat proscenium stage.
It is historically significant for its role in exhibiting the works of the American Abstract expressionists Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, John Ferren, and Robert Motherwell; performances by Helen Hayes, Thornton Wilder, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon, Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson, and hundreds of other world-class stars of stage and screen; and involvement by the literary figures George Plimpton, Peter Matthiessen, Gore Vidal, Edward Albee, and John Steinbeck.
It holds a permanent collection of 2,400 works of art and continues to build on important relationships in the worlds of film, theater, dance, music, and visual art.
The Naples Art Institute is at 585 Park Street in Naples.
For more information, visit https://www.naplesart.org or telephone 239-262-6517.
The institute is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from 11a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday.