The Long Island Museum (LIM), home to more than 60,000 artifacts, will be adding two new art exhibitions to their gallery collection on July 24, blending immersive and eyecatching concepts of history and artwork.
The exhibits, Gatsby at 100 and Giants and Gems, will allow guests to travel back in time and view artifacts tracing back to Long Island roots and literary history. The first exhibit ensures guests get a glimpse of the creation and mythology behind late Great Neck resident F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, The Great Gatsby, and view collections of items from private and public collections related to the book. The second exhibit juxtaposes literal and figurative experiences in art history through large and small crafts and works from the Long Island Museum’s Art, History and Carriage Collections.
“Our Gatsby exhibition has been created in celebration of this literary centennial anniversary, and transports visitors into the context of Fitzgerald’s novel and how it has been an enduring source of story-telling over these last 100 years,” Joshua Ruff, The Long Island Museum’s co-executive director of collections and programming, said in a statement. “Similarly, our Giants and Gems exhibition will provide visitors with an opportunity to also transport themselves into a new way of viewing art, interacting with works in unusual ways and gaining a new perspective that lends itself to discovery.”
The Gatsby exhibition will run through October 19 in the Costigan Gallery, and the Giants and Gems exhibition will run through December 21 in the main gallery. Some highlights from each of the exhibitions include original movie posters and memorabilia from the 1949, 1974, and 2013 film versions of The Great Gatsby and an abstract painting called Black Opal by Bill Durham, which puts the viewer in an alternate reality “filled with the power and dynamism employed by the artist,” according to Ruff and Nina Sangimino, Curator at the LIM.
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Both members of the museum noted what guests should take away from both exhibits and how both displays demonstrate an artistic analysis of Long Island. Ruff hopes people are drawn to Fitzgerald’s arrival in Great Neck, which provided the context and layout for “one of the most enduring works in the American literary canon,” and Sangimino mentioned how visitors should “spend time with each piece” from the exhibit and be in the artist’s shoes when visualizing the size and scale of the giants and gems.
“Taking a recognizable object or figure and dramatically enlarging or miniaturizing is disorienting and allows you to have a new experience with something familiar,” said Sangimino in a statement. “This new perspective lends itself to discovery as you are forced to interact with and view the work in an unusual way, often seeing details and reading meanings missed in the conventional object.”
The Three Village Rotary Club will also be hosting a free outdoor concert the evening the exhibitions unveil, featuring live music by party band 1 Step Ahead and treats and refreshments provided by The Bench in Stony Brook and Lexi’s Lemonade. The concert will begin at 7 p.m. outside the Long Island Museum’s Art Museum lawn, located at 1200 Route 25A in Stony Brook. Attendees will have free admission to the exhibitions.
“We are thrilled to be bringing this free concert to the community, and are excited for people to join us for a truly special evening on the lawn of the Art Museum,” Chris Sokol, vice president of the Three Village Rotary Club, said in a statement. “It’s sure to be a great night of live music in a truly picturesque location here on Long Island, and promises to be [a] fun night for people of all ages.”
The exhibition hours are Thursdays at 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Fridays through Sundays from 12:00 p.m.- 5 p.m. For more information regarding the outdoor concert, exhibitions and Long Island Museum programs, visit threevillagerotary.com and longislandmuseum.org.
