Collecting Long Island

Preservation Long Island Exhibition Gallery
September 15, 2017–December 17, 2017

In 1976, SPLIA curator, Dean Failey, mounted the first exhibition to explore Long Island’s rich and often puzzling decorative arts heritage. More than forty years later, its groundbreaking discoveries continue to inspire and inform. Collecting Long Island follows the continued efforts of collectors to expand our knowledge of Long Island’s complex material past.

This display of outstanding examples of regional paintings and decorative arts, most on public view for the first time, will present new discoveries and encourage visitors to look at objects through the eye of the collector to understand how we know what we know about the things Long Islanders have made, used, and cherished for centuries.