EXHIBITIONS Current & Upcoming

This exhibition is the first to recognize Emma Stebbins (1815–1882) as one of the most significant American sculptors of the nineteenth century. While her Bethesda Fountain in Central Park has been a global icon for 150 years, the full scope of Stebbins’s life and work is virtually unknown. From 1857 to 1870, she created innovative sculptures while living in Rome with her wife, renowned Shakespearean actress Charlotte Cushman, who championed her career. Stebbins modeled inventive and incisive interpretations of literary and biblical subjects, unprecedented allegories of American industry, and notable portraits of her friends and family. In 1863, with the order for the Bethesda Fountain, she became the first woman to earn a commission for a public sculpture from the city of New York. When Bostonians installed her statue of educator Horace Mann on the grounds of the Massachusetts State House in 1865, she became the first woman in the country to complete an outdoor bronze monument.

Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History brings together most of the artist’s rare extant work, including a portrait drawing and several sculptures that will be on public view for the first time in a century. In addition to fourteen sculptures, the exhibition features archival material including photographs that document lost marble sculptures and plaster studies that Stebbins never realized in stone or bronze. Stebbins completed the Bethesda Fountain to celebrate the Croton Aqueduct, which brought clean drinking water to New York City. The inclusion of paintings and photographs by historic and contemporary artists including William Merritt Chase, Martha Edelheit, and Ricky Flores attest to its enduring relevance as a monument to health, healing, and peace.

The exhibition is curated by Karli Wurzelbacher, PhD, Chief Curator of The Heckscher Museum of Art, which stewards the largest collection of Stebbins’s work. An extensive scholarly publication with a foreword by Pulitzer- and Tony-award winning playwright Tony Kushner accompanies the exhibition.

Celebrating its 30th anniversary, Long Island’s Best has been a hallmark of the Museum’s educational programming for three decades, showcasing the outstanding work of over 2,000 high school students from across Long Island. What began as an annual exhibition of outstanding student work has become a lasting tradition⸺one that recognizes excellence while nurturing the next generation of creative thinkers.

Long Island’s Best continues to be the only juried exhibition for Long Island high school students that provides the opportunity to exhibit in a museum. The Heckscher encourages students to think outside the box as they work in a broad range of media, styles, and subjects. This year, 63 public and private schools submitted students’ artwork for jurying. 402 entries were received, and Consulting Curator Meredith A. Brown and guest juror Aaron Feltman selected 84 for display. View a complete list of exhibiting artists.

Students are challenged to select artwork on view in the Museum as the inspiration for their own work, making creative connections with the generations who have come before them. Students have also written artist statements explaining their creative process. Visit the Museum’s digital guide on Bloomberg Connects to explore all artwork in the exhibit, read students’ statements, access exclusive audio and video content, and more.

This anniversary exhibition celebrates its remarkable legacy by looking both forward and back. Visitors are invited to view archival memories and watch video footage featuring reflections from past exhibiting students, teachers, guest jurors, and more. The exhibition also highlights numerous alumni who share where their journeys have led—from careers in the arts to paths shaped by creativity in countless other fields. Together, these stories reflect the lasting impact of arts education and the power of early encouragement.

An exclusive Friends and Family Preview Day and Awards Ceremony for exhibiting artists will be held on Saturday, March 28.

Lines of Influence: Artists Teaching Artists celebrates the longstanding tradition of artists educating and learning from one another. The exhibition illuminates diverse pedagogies of artmaking across generations, tracing networks of mentorship that include color theorist Josef Albers, plein air instructor William Merritt Chase, Abstract Expressionist pioneer Hans Hofmann, and feminist educators Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro.

Drawing from the Heckscher Museum’s collection, this exhibition brings together 54 works by 39 artists, including paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and ceramics that span the nineteenth century to the present. It showcases never-before-exhibited works such as drawings of plaster casts by Thomas Anshutz and a terra cotta sculpture by Mary Frank. Other key works include an early abstract painting that Elaine De Kooning created while studying with Albers at Black Mountain College, teaching sketches by George Grosz, and a luminous “mindscape” painting by Richard Mayhew. Lines of Influence highlights instances in which artists collaborated, apprenticed, and guided one another, revealing the vibrant exchanges that shaped their artistic legacies.