TAKING VENICE UNCOVERS THE TRUE STORY BEHIND RUMORS THAT THE U.S. GOVERNMENT AND A TEAM OF HIGH-PLACED INSIDERS RIGGED THE 1964 VENICE BIENNALE – THE OLYMPICS OF ART – SO THEIR CHOSEN ARTIST, ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, COULD WIN THE GRAND PRIZE.
At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. government is determined to fight Communism with culture. The Venice Biennale, the world’s most influential art exhibition, becomes a proving ground in 1964. Alice Denney, Washington insider and friend of the Kennedys, recommends Alan Solomon, an ambitious curator making waves with trailblazing art, to organize the U.S. entry. Together with Leo Castelli, a powerful New York art dealer, they embark on a daring plan to make Robert Rauschenberg the winner of the Grand Prize. The artist is yet to be taken seriously with his combinations of junk off the street and images from pop culture, but he has the potential to dazzle. Deftly pulling off maneuvers that could have come from a Hollywood thriller, the American team leaves the international press crying foul and Rauschenberg questioning the politics of nationalism that sent him there.
Join us for a special evening celebrating the release of I Don’t Think About Being Great (Yale University Press, 2024), a new book of writings by the artist Robert Rauschenberg. While he was acclaimed for his diverse, six-decade career as an artist, his written work is less known and is published here for the first time.
The program will be moderated by editor Francine Snyder, Director of Archives at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and feature artists Scott Bluedorn and Evan Yee – Student Art Festival: Rauschenberg 100 artists and alumni from the Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva, who will share reflections on their time in residency and the ways in which Rauschenberg’s spirit of experimentation continues to inspire their work.
Presented in honor of the Rauschenberg Centennial and in conjunction with Guild Hall’s Student Art Festival: Rauschenberg 100, the evening celebrates Rauschenberg’s legacy as an artist, collaborator, and catalyst for creativity across generations.
Copies of I Don’t Think About Being Great are available for purchase during the reservation checkout process or on the day of the program, subject to availability.
Celebrating XO, Ballerina Big Sis and the upcoming PBS documentary Tiler Peck: Suspending Time
Join us for an unforgettable evening with Tiler Peck, Principal Dancer with New York City Ballet, in conversation with two-time Tony nominated actress & dancer, Charlotte d’Amboise (Chicago, A Chorus Line, Pippin). Together, they’ll explore Peck’s extraordinary career, her new memoir XO, Ballerina Big Sis, and her upcoming PBS Great Performances documentary Tiler Peck: Suspending Time (premiering November 7).
Through candid reflection and heartfelt storytelling, Peck will share insights into artistry, discipline, mentorship, and the courage to evolve both onstage and off. This conversation offers a rare glimpse behind the curtain of one of dance’s brightest stars.
A book signing will follow the conversation in lobby after the program. Advance copies can be ordered as an add-on to your ticket purchase, or on the day of the program, while supplies last.
Celebrate the creativity of our community’s young artists at the opening of the Student Art Festival: Rauschenberg 100. The afternoon includes a drop-in art workshop led by the Guild Hall Teen Arts Council and lively pop-up performances by local students.
Inspired by the spirit of Robert Rauschenberg, the festival showcases the imagination and talent of the next generation. All are welcome.
$20 | $15 for Members | Free for Community Pillars
The Innovators Talk Show at Guild Hall brings you an insightful series spotlighting the business and cultural leaders who are reshaping their industries and doing game-changing work.
Episode 1: Guild Hall Executive Director Andrea Grover will sit down with Malcolm Carfrae, Founder and Principal of Carfrae Consulting, a global consultancy that provides hands-on, strategic counsel for brands in all areas of communications, and former Head of Communications at both Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren.
Reception to follow with drinks and light bites by Moby’s East Hampton.
The InnovatorsTalk Show is free to Community Pillars.Not a member? JOIN today!
Exhibition Walkthrough & Book Launch with Melanie Crader and Liane Thatcher
Please join Melanie Crader, Guild Hall museum director and curator of visual arts and Liane Thatcher, Mary Heilmann’s Studio Director of over 25 years, for an exhibition walkthrough of Heilmann’s exhibition Water Way. This conversation will coincide with the launch of Mary Heilmann: Works on Paper, 1973-2019, the first publication dedicated to Heilmann’s works on paper practice which feature many of the works included in the artist’s Guild Hall exhibition.
Books are available both signed and unsigned in advance as an add on to your ticket purchase, or unsigned in-person while supplies last. To add the book to your purchase, choose the “Products” tab before checking out. Books are $48 signed, and $38 unsigned, plus tax.
This workshop is sold out. Please email info@guildhall.org to be added to the standby list.
ART SOCIAL: HOLIDAY SWEATER FELTING WITH LAURIE LAMBRECHT
Back by popular demand!
Do you have a piece of clothing that could use a creative touch to bring it back into your wardrobe circulation – maybe something festive for the holidays? You don’t want to miss the return of this fun and easy approach to revitalizing an item of clothing a special way. With instruction by the master, artist Laurie Lambrecht, we will use needle felting to repair small holes or wear and tear and embellish the pieces with personalized motifs or other creative designs. In this way, you can give your garment a personal and sustainable touch.
Please bring a woven/knit item or items you wish to revitalize. All other materials will be provided.
Art Social admission includes complimentary wine (or a non-alcoholic beverage), and lite bites generously donated by Harbor Market & Kitchen in Sag Harbor.
Art Social is a monthly gathering where attendees enter into a supportive and judgment-free session of art/craftmaking and socializing. Bring your friends and expect to make new ones while tapping into your creative selves. Workshops will be led by experts in their practice, and the projects are designed to be easily and enjoyably accomplished by all skill levels.
This program is sold out. Make sure to book early for future workshops because they sell out fast!
ART SOCIAL: SHELL DECOUPAGE WITH HEIDI WRIGHT STEVENS
Using nature found in our own backyard, join us for an evening of creativity as we transform your own sea shells with the art of decoupage. Refined through the art of decoupage, each piece is layered with delicate papers and sealed to create a polished, lasting finish. A simple coastal treasure, reimagined as art for a bedside table, coffee table or a special spot in your home!
Art Social admission includes complimentary wine (or a non-alcoholic beverage), and lite bites generously donated by Harbor Market & Kitchen in Sag Harbor.
Art Social is a monthly gathering where attendees enter into a supportive and judgment-free session of art/craftmaking and socializing. Bring your friends and expect to make new ones while tapping into your creative selves. Workshops will be led by experts in their practice, and the projects are designed to be easily and enjoyably accomplished by all skill levels.
Guild Hall William P. Rayner Artists-in-Residence, Site-Specific Dances (artistic directors: Michael Spencer Phillips and Dino Kiratzidis) share an in-process presentation of their new dance-theater work, Love Letters: Cage to Cunningham.
LOVE LETTERS: CAGE TO CUNNINGHAM is a dance/media-performance work by Site-Specific Dances, based on selected letters from Love, Icebox. These letters reveal the interwoven nature of John and Merce’s artistic and personal lives. They contain moments of flirtation, humor, insecurity, joy, longing, arousal, and jealousy, emotions specific to the letters but also universal to human experiences of love and longing.
The piece unfolds as a series of vignettes that follow the emotional arc of the letters, combining media and live music with a new ensemble dance suite by Michael Spencer Phillips. The set design is an assemblage of various media elements drawn from the text of the letters and curated by Dino Kiratzidis in collaboration with videographer Emma Kazaryan and graphic designer Riley Hooker. Adam Tendler joins the team as a John Cage specialist, performer and adviser, alongside collaborating composers Warren Hildebrand and Matthew Ricketts.
The in-process presentation will be followed by a conversation between the creative team and Executive Director of the John Cage Trust, Jeffrey Lependorf.
Estimated Run Time: 2 hours and 50 minutes with one intermission
On May 30, the Metropolitan Opera’s 2025–26 Live in HD season comes to a close with a live transmission of American composer Gabriela Lena Frank’s first opera, a magical-realist portrait of Mexico’s painterly power couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, with libretto by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Nilo Cruz. Fashioned as a reversal of the Orpheus and Euridice myth, the story depicts Frida, sung by leading mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, leaving the underworld on the Day of the Dead and reuniting with Diego, portrayed by baritone Carlos Álvarez. The famously feuding pair briefly relive their tumultuous love, embracing both the passion and the pain before bidding the land of the living a final farewell. Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the Met-premiere staging of Frank’s opera, a “confident, richly imagined score” (The New Yorker) that “bursts with color and fresh individuality” (Los Angeles Times). The vibrant new production, taking enthusiastic inspiration from Frida and Diego’s paintings, is directed and choreographed by Deborah Colker.
This live cinema transmission is part of the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series, bringing opera to movie theaters across the globe.
