Join us for a book launch celebrating the release of Liberty Labs, a new publication tracing the birth and evolution of the shared design and fabrication studio housed in a 19th-century warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Founded as a collaborative workspace for designers, makers, and artists, Liberty Labs has grown into a dynamic creative community shaped by experimentation, shared resources, and collective exchange.

The book explores Red Hook’s early industrial history and the neighborhood’s transformation alongside the founding and ethos of Liberty Labs. Through essays, archival material, and rich visual documentation, the publication highlights the practices, biographies, and projects of both past and present members of the collective, offering insight into the studio’s collaborative model and creative output across disciplines.

Copies of Liberty Labs will be available for purchase at the event, and guests will have the opportunity to celebrate the publication with members of the Liberty Labs community.

This program is free with Museum admission.

A collective soundtrack created by neighbors, visitors, strangers, and friends.

Join us for a vinyl listening and music-sharing gathering hosted by Liberty Labs member Joel Seigle—industrial designer and custom sound system builder.

Remember vinyl? The weight of it. The crackle before the needle settles. This is an invitation to slow down and listen together. Bring a record or two—old favorites, rare finds, beloved classics, borrowed gems, inherited oddities, or total mysteries you’ve never actually played. If it’s on vinyl, it belongs here.

We’ll take turns and share the room. No playlists. No skipping ahead. Just sound, stories, and the quiet thrill of hearing something new through someone else’s ears.

Come as you are. Bring what you love (or what confuses you). Let’s listen together.

This program is free of charge.

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Joel Seigle is a designer and maker whose practice is shaped by a balance between nature and urban culture. Raised outside Chicago in a family connected to the lumber trade and trained in industrial design at Pratt Institute, his work spans a range of materials while maintaining a clean, modern aesthetic.

Evan Yee is a founding member of Liberty Labs and a Brooklyn-based artist and fabricator who grew up between Oakland, California, and Sag Harbor, New York. His practice evolved from painting into multimedia sculpture, installation, and metalworking, which now anchors his work.

This exhibition marks the first major institutional solo presentation of Eric Freeman’s work in the East End, where the artist lived and worked for many years. Freeman’s radiant abstractions transform color into planes of light and pigment that construct space rather than merely depict it. Layers of luminous varnish and saturated tone generate a visual depth that feels structural—at times almost architectural—drawing viewers into fields of color defined by both intensity and calm.

The exhibition brings together a selection of paintings alongside a small group of furniture pieces designed by Freeman, revealing a practice shaped by the productive tension between control and emotion, precision and presence. His work enters into quiet dialogue with the legacies of Josef Albers, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, Mark Rothko, and James Turrell. Freeman’s subtly modulated surfaces, sleek yet unmistakably hand-painted, balance intellectual rigor with sensory immediacy, collapsing distinctions between painting, object, and environment.

Presented following the artist’s death in 2021, the exhibition honors Freeman’s sustained contribution to contemporary abstraction and affirms his lasting connection to the East End’s artistic landscape, where his work quietly expanded the possibilities of color, light, and spatial experience.

This exhibition is co-curated by artist Nathan Dillworth and Melanie Crader, museum director and curator of visual arts with support from Philippa Content, museum manager and registrar and Claire Hunter, museum coordinator and curatorial associate.

Michael Butler is the Top Honors recipient of the 85th Artist Members Exhibition, selected by Storm Ascher, independent curator, writer, and founder of Superposition Gallery and the Hamptons Black Arts Council.

A self-taught artist with a strong interest in art and history, Butler has exhibited widely over the past three decades. His small-scale narrative paintings draw on mythology, religion, dreams, and storytelling to illuminate overlooked histories—particularly those of enslaved and Indigenous communities on the East End. Rooted in the belief that the past remains a living part of the present, Butler’s work gives visual form to the lives and events often left undocumented. Descended from a Sag Harbor family whose presence dates to the 1920s, Butler has made the village his full-time home since 1988.

Working primarily in acrylic on canvas, Butler describes his practice as narrative or “intuitive” painting. Through a sense of wonder, he constructs imagined realities that merge historical fact and creative vision—echoing a poetic, dreamlike spirit while asserting a distinctly contemporary voice. Butler’s practice reimagines collective memory as an active, evolving narrative, transforming fragments of history into visual allegories that connect personal lineage with broader cultural identity.

This exhibition is organized by Melanie Crader, museum director and curator of visual arts, with support from Philippa Content, museum manager and registrar, and Claire Hunter, museum coordinator and curatorial associate.

The Artist Members Exhibition began in 1938, and Guild Hall continues this long-standing democratic tradition by hosting the oldest non-juried museum exhibition on Long Island. This lively presentation features more than three hundred works and showcases a variety of mediums. As in the traditional salon exhibition, works by established artists are shown alongside those of emerging talents and first-time exhibitors, offering a sampling of artistic practices within our community. This initiative provides an opportunity for audiences to support and celebrate the artists who live and work in our immediate region and for artists to sell their works. In turn, artists show their commitment to and support of Guild Hall. Early participants included James Brooks, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Alfonso Ossorio, Charlotte Park, Jackson Pollock, and many more.

Guild Hall invites nationally and internationally recognized art professionals to select the Top Honors Award and Honorable Mentions. The recipient of the Top Honors Award is given a future solo exhibition at Guild Hall.

Please check back in the coming months for updates on registering for the Artist Members Exhibition.

This exhibition is organized by Melanie Crader, museum director and curator of visual arts, with support from Philippa Content, museum manager and registrar, and Claire Hunter, museum coordinator and curatorial associate.

Liberty Labs: A Decade of Design marks the 10th anniversary of the Liberty Labs Foundation, co-founded by Evan Yee, who grew up in Sag Harbor and is now based in Brooklyn. The exhibition brings together work by all the collective’s members, past and present, reflecting on their shared commitment to art, design, and community.

Presented in the Marks Family South Gallery, the exhibition draws inspiration from the room’s history as a salon, a space where art, music, and conversation once converged. In that spirit, A Decade of Design invites visitors to engage directly with the works. Select furniture pieces may be used, sound elements will activate the space, and occasional public events will further animate the gallery, blending art, design, and social interaction.

Evan Yee leads the exhibition design, presenting functional objects and artworks from 33 current and former members. Together, they exemplify a creative community where collaboration and experimentation thrive—a living, working, and evolving studio environment.

Participating artists:
Alara Alkan, Alex Sagnella, Andrea Steves, Annika Bowker, Bowen Liu, Bryan Johnson, Charlie Recknagel, Cherylyn Ahrens, Chris Cushingham, Chris Gentry, Cissy Huang, Cody Campanie, Evan Jewett, Evan Yee, Jason Hernandez, Jason Pfaeffle, Jess Chace, Joel Seigle, John Koten, Jon Billing, Julien Leyssene, Kelsey Knight Mohr, Maggie Pei, Michael Yates, Pat Keesey, Pat Kim, Reed Hansuld, Sam Kallman, Shengning Zhang, Thomas Breglia, Thomas Yang, Timothy Furstnau, Todd Higuchi

This exhibition is organized by Melanie Crader, museum director and curator of visual arts, with support from Philippa Content, museum manager and registrar and Claire Hunter, museum coordinator and curatorial associate.

GALLERY HOURS:
THURSDAY TO SUNDAY, 12-5 PM

MUSEUM ADMISSION:
$12 / $10 for Seniors, 65+
Free for Members, Children, and Students

Advance reservations are not required.

Impressions Transferred: Lasting Legacies of Robert Rauschenberg presents a selection of works from Guild Hall’s permanent collection, complemented by loans from friends, peers, and others closely connected to Rauschenberg and Guild Hall. Together, they celebrate his influence and legacy. The recently published book I Don’t Think About Being Great: Selected Writings, featuring reproductions of Rauschenberg’s handwritten notes, offers a compelling testament to his impact in his own words.

Born in Port Arthur, Texas, Rauschenberg (1925–2008) studied at Black Mountain College in North Carolina before relocating to New York, where he redefined the possibilities of art making. His practice blurred distinctions between painting, sculpture, collage, photography, and printmaking, often incorporating everyday materials such as fabric, found objects, magazine images, and photographic transfers. In 2005 Guild Hall presented Robert Rauschenberg: Hoarfrosts, a focused exhibition of his ethereal fabric works. His engagement with the East End was fostered through friendships and collaborations with figures such as the cultural critic John Jonas Gruen, who documented the vibrant artistic circles of Long Island and New York.

Presented as part of Rauschenberg 100, the global centennial celebration of the artist’s birth, this exhibition honors the artist’s vision of collaboration, experimentation, and social engagement. His innovative approach made him an ideal touchstone for Guild Hall’s Teaching Artists Program, which developed artworks inspired by his practice, such as those on view in the Student Art Festival exhibition. Through this initiative Rauschenberg’s legacy continues to inspire artists and students to explore and create without limits.

As we mark this moment of reflection, Impressions Transferred celebrates Rauschenberg as both visionary artist and dynamic connector. Through his work and through his own words in I Don’t Think About Being Great, we are invited to observe, respond, and carry forward his spirit of generosity and innovation.

This exhibition is organized by Melanie Crader, museum director and curator of visual arts, with support from Philippa Content, museum manager and registrar, and Claire Hunter, museum coordinator and curatorial associate.

Ross Bleckner emerged as a leading artist in New York during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, creating paintings that explore change, loss, memory, and the human body. A central figure in the decade’s revival of painting, he developed a practice that merges psychological, social, and political themes within a strong conceptual framework. In 1995, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York presented a mid-career retrospective of his work, underscoring his importance in contemporary art.

NEVER THE LESS will highlight a lesser-known part of Bleckner’s process, offering new insight into one of the most prolific painters of our time. Bleckner begins by making his own paint and testing it on black paper, where the experimental brushwork often produces striking results. From there, he creates a series of small canvases that gradually increase in scale, leading to the large paintings for which he is best known.

Over decades, this approach has yielded hundreds—if not thousands—of works. Guild Hall presents a selection of these rarely seen studies alongside major large-scale paintings. While rooted in process, the smaller works stand powerfully on their own. Together, they reveal the breadth of Bleckner’s artistic vision, offering an expansive view of his practice across time—an illustrated timeline through painting.

This exhibition is organized by Melanie Crader, museum director and curator of visual arts, with support from Philippa Content, museum manager and registrar and Claire Hunter, museum coordinator and curatorial associate.

GALLERY HOURS:
WEDNESDAY TO SUNDAY, 12-5 PM

MUSEUM ADMISSION:
$12 / $10 for Seniors, 65+
Free for Members, Children, and Students

Claire Watson is the 2023 Top Honors recipient of the 84th Artist Members Exhibition, selected by Virginia Lebermann, cofounder and board president of Ballroom Marfa. This exhibition marks Watson’s first major institutional solo presentation on the East End of Long Island, where she has maintained a home and studio in Water Mill for three decades.

Watson’s sculptures and mixed-media assemblages are composed from found materials. In her recent work, she deconstructs salvaged leather garments and reconfigures them into new formal compositions using traditional sewing and pattern-making techniques. These works highlight the tactile and structural qualities of leather, transforming utilitarian objects into forms with renewed expressive potential. The traces of wear embedded in the garments suggest histories of the body and labor, which Watson refashions into abstract meditations on human form and presence.

This exhibition is organized by Melanie Crader, museum director and curator of visual arts, with support from Philippa Content, museum manager and registrar and Claire Hunter, museum coordinator and curatorial associate.

GALLERY HOURS:
THURSDAY TO SUNDAY, 12-5 PM

MUSEUM ADMISSION:
$12 / $10 for Seniors, 65+
Free for Members, Children, and Students