Installation view of Mary Heilmann: Water Way, Guild Hall, East Hampton, August 3 – October 26, 2025. Photo: Francine Fleischer. Image Courtesy of Guild Hall.
Mary Heilmann: Water Way is the artist’s first large-scale solo presentation at an institution on the East End of Long Island, where she has been an integral part of the region’s creative community for decades. Heilmann grew up along the California coast, in both the Bay Area and Los Angeles. She became a competitive diver as a young teenager, frequently engaged in body surfing, and later became involved in the beatnik and surfing cultures, all of which have had a strong influence on her work. Heilmann moved to New York City in 1968, where she still resides, and has a home and studio Bridgehampton.
Throughout her life, Heilmann has consistently chosen and prioritized living close to water, which has had a profound impact on her artistic practice. She remembers making a watercolor of the ocean when she was about sixteen years old. This proximity to the ocean has influenced the way she considers light when she is conceiving a painting. For example, at sunset and moonrise she looks at the sand, the sky, and the sea for inspiration for her bold color palette. She characterizes her work as autobiographical, as she translates her observations into abstractions and often gives her works titles that offer viewers hints about her ideas. Whether reflected in her imagery or in the titles she gives her works, water has long been a recurring theme throughout her practice. She often translates waves into geometric, hard-edge patterns and likens this to the way a diver must conceptualize the physical geometry of the body when planning a dive.
Guild Hall is pleased to present an exhibition that Heilmann has had a strong desire to stage—one that brings together more than 40 works from a focused area of her output. The exhibition includes works on paper, ceramics, and paintings from the 1980s to the present.
This exhibition is organized by Melanie Crader, museum director and curator of visual arts, with Philippa Content, museum manager and registrar, and Claire Hunter, museum coordinator and curatorial associate.
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Mary Heilmann
Mary Heilmann was born in 1940 in San Francisco, California. She earned a BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara (1962), and an MA from the University of California, Berkeley (1967). She moved to New York the following year, in 1968. Since then, Heilmann’s work has appeared in three Whitney Biennial exhibitions (1972, 1989, 2008) and is included in the permanent collections of many museums worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco MOMA, National Gallery of Art, the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, Netherlands, and the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, Germany. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2017), was a United States Artists Oliver Fellow (2014), has received the Anonymous Was A Woman Foundation Award (2006) and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Mary Heilmann: Starry Night an early body of sculptural work is currently on exhibit at Dia Beacon NY. In April an installation, Mary Heilmann: Long Line, debuted at the Whitney Museum offering a social space environment with a large mural and seating by the artist. In the fall Mary Heilmann: Works on Paper, 1973-2019 will be published with an essay by art historian Jo Applin and a personal reflection by artist Ilana Savdie.
Mary Heilmann lives and works in Bridgehampton, New York and New York City.
Photo: Jo Ann Comfort
Sponsors
Lead Sponsors: Agnes Gund, Ellen and Howard Katz, Louise Riggio, and The Tessler Family
Additional Support: Shelley Fox Aarons and Philip Aarons, Carol and John Finley
Media Partner: CULTURED
Visual Arts programs are supported by funding from Barbara and Richard S. Lane, Lucio and Joan Noto, The Michael Lynne Museum Endowment, The Melville Straus Family Endowment, and additional support provided by The Giuppy Nantista Fund and The Hoie Fund.
Additional support provided by Friends of the Museum: Shari and Jeff Aronson, The Artist Profile Archive, William L. Bernhard, The Hayden Family Foundation, Robert Longo and Sophie Chahinian, Elin and Michael Nierenberg, Onna House, Hillary and Jeff Suchman, Jane Wesman and Don Savelson, and Yurman Family Foundation.
Free gallery admission is sponsored, in part, by Landscape Details.