PALMER Picks: The Best Art Exhibitions in the Hamptons This Summer

The Hamptons has long attracted artists, collectors, and cultural institutions, but in recent years its cultural landscape has become richer than ever. New foundations and exhibition spaces have joined longstanding institutions, creating one of the country’s most compelling concentrations of shows during the summer months. This year, with the nation’s 250th anniversary prompting artists and institutions alike to ask hard questions about American identity, the programming feels especially powerful. These are the exhibitions not to miss.

 

 

Sanford Biggers: Drift
Emmi Whitehorse: Fresh Paint
Parrish Art Museum
Water Mill
Through September 13 & 28, 2026

The Parrish is presenting two exceptional shows this season, and both are worth the trip on their own. Sanford Biggers‘s Drift is the artist’s first major solo exhibition on the East End, and it is organized around the image of a cloud. Cloud-like sculptures drift through the gallery while quilt works from his “Codex” series take on cumulus forms, and a site-specific sand installation draws from Buddhist mandalas. The show is also part of the Parrish’s year-long series examining American values on the nation’s semiquincentennial. Alongside it, Fresh Paint offers a focused look at the work of Emmi Whitehorse, whose luminous abstractions are rooted in memory, landscape, and Navajo cosmology. Built through delicate layers of color and gesture, her paintings evoke both aerial views of the land and deeply personal reflections on place, offering a rare opportunity to experience the subtle power of her work firsthand.

 

 

 

Arcmanoro Niles: Forgotten Words I Never Got to Say
Guild Hall
East Hampton
Through July 19, 2026

One of the most compelling figurative painters of his generation returns to the institution that helped launch his career. This exhibition traces a decade of Arcmanoro Niles‘s practice, beginning with his 2016 residency at Guild Hall and following the evolution of his distinctive visual language. Represented by Lehmann Maupin, Niles is known for his luminous portraits rendered in layers of pinks, oranges, purples, and glitter, where he transforms scenes drawn from memory and everyday life into psychologically charged compositions that challenge traditional ideas of portraiture. Hidden within the scenes are what he calls “seekers,” small imp-like figures inspired by ancient Egyptian sculpture, standing in for his subjects’ most elemental impulses. The longer you look, the more you find.

 

 

 

THIS LAND: Considering the American Landscape
The Church
Sag Harbor
Opening June 21 – September 6, 2026

Housed in a meticulously restored 1835 Methodist church in Sag Harbor and reimagined by artists Eric Fischl and April Gornik, The Church is one of the most thoughtful additions to the Hamptons art scene in the past decade. Since opening in 2021, it has become known for ambitious exhibitions that bring together art, history, and public conversation. This summer, THIS LAND asks a question that has occupied artists for generations: What is the American landscape? Curated by Donna De Salvo and Seph Rodney, the exhibition brings together more than fifty artists across generations to examine how ideas of place, identity, memory, and the environment have shaped the American experience.

 

 

 

Alan Ruiz: De sol a sol
Dia Bridgehampton
Bridgehampton
Opening June 27, 2026 – June 2027

Before it became an art space, Dia Bridgehampton was a Baptist church and a fire station. Born in Mexico City and raised on Long Island, Alan Ruiz, whose work explores labor, architecture, and systems of power, uses that layered history as the starting point for a major new site-specific commission. Drawing on both the building’s past and the agricultural traditions of the surrounding region, the exhibition becomes a meditation on work, land, and the invisible structures that shape daily life.

 

 

 

Sean Scully: 48
LongHouse Reserve
East Hampton
Through December 2028

LongHouse Reserve remains one of the Hamptons’ most rewarding cultural destinations, where art, architecture, and landscape exist in constant dialogue. This summer, visitors can encounter Sean Scully‘s monumental 48, a twenty-foot-tall sculpture composed of stacked aluminum forms painted in the artist’s signature bands of color. The work joins LongHouse’s distinguished collection of outdoor sculpture by artists including Yoko Ono, Sol LeWitt, Maren Hassinger, and Willem de Kooning.

 

 

 

(There’s Gonna Be A) Showdown: Matthew Satz at the Pollock-Krasner House
Pollock-Krasner House
Springs
June 18 – July 19, 2026

Few exhibition spaces carry as much artistic history as the former home and studio of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. For this site-specific project, East End artist Matthew Satz presents new work created in response to the location and Pollock’s enduring legacy. The exhibition offers a compelling dialogue between one of America’s most influential artistic sites and a contemporary painter deeply engaged with gesture, movement, and process.

 

 

Tiffany Silver
Peter Marino Art Foundation
Southampton
Through October 2026

The building alone is worth the detour: a 19th-century Queen Anne structure that once housed the Rogers Memorial Library, purchased by Peter Marino in 2018 and restored into over 8,000 square feet of exhibition space. This summer, one of those galleries is given over to more than 100 Tiffany mixed metal works from the late 19th century. Pitchers, tea kettles, trophies, and vases featuring Japonesque and nature-inspired designs that show just how seriously Tiffany took the craft of silversmithing. Running concurrently are exhibitions from Y.Z. Kami, Robert Nava, and Betty Parsons paired with Carla Accardi.

 

 

 

The Story of America: 1776–2026
Southampton Arts Center
Southampton
Through July 18, 2026

Marking the 250th anniversary of the United States, this ambitious exhibition traces the history of American democracy through campaign memorabilia, political artifacts, historic documents, and objects drawn from the prestigious Wright Family Collection. Equal parts history lesson and cultural portrait, the exhibition reveals the triumphs, contradictions, personalities, and oddities that have shaped American political life over the past two and a half centuries.