LongHouse Reserve, East Hampton’s 16-acre sculpture garden and nature sanctuary, will open its 2026 season with a Spring Awakening celebration on April 18 from 12:30 to 5 PM. The gardens will boast new sculptures by Larry Bell, Renee Cox, William Kentridge, and Sean Scully, which complement its permanent collection and long-term loans by Willem de Kooning, Maren Hassinger, Fitzhugh Karol, Grace Knowlton, Sol LeWitt, Yoko Ono, Barbara Shawcroft, and Toshiko Takaezu, among others. LongHouse also welcomes the newly appointed Executive Director, Lara Sweeney.
LongHouse President Louis Bradbury said, “We are very fortunate to have Lara Sweeney become our next Executive Director. A dedicated Board committee spent several months interviewing many exceptional candidates. Long House is at an important stage in its history. In the four years since our founder, Jack Lenor Larsen’s, death, we have stabilized our organizational structure, brought in significant artwork, and bolstered our programming. Lara’s exceptional abilities in financial and administrative management, as well as her broad programmatic experience, make her the perfect person to lead our bright future.”
“This is a full circle moment for me in many ways,” said Sweeney. “My husband and I were married at LongHouse Reserve in 2005. Twenty years later, I have the opportunity to help carry out LongHouse’s mission at one of the East End’s most beloved spaces – it’s a dream come true. I am honored to work alongside the Board of Trustees on exciting projects – including opening the home of Jack Lenor Larsen to the public and ensuring that LongHouse continues to thrive. This is a community sanctuary where art and nature exist together in thoughtful dialogue.”
Sweeney has more than two decades of fundraising and non-profit management experience. She has held leadership positions at the Children’s Museum of the East End since 2012; initially joining as the Director of Development and stepping into the Co-President’s role in 2022.
This season, LongHouse welcomes the world-renowned Irish American artist Sean Scully into the garden with his colored stack entitled “48” (2024), a piece that epitomizes his deliberate use of stripes and color, with gestures toward land, sea, and sky. Scully transforms the rigid geometry of the stripe and the grid into a profound visual language of emotion, history, and light.
New Mexico-based artist Larry Bell enters the LongHouse sculpture garden with “Pacific Red II” (2017), most recently seen at Madison Square Park Conservancy’s Improvisations in the Park. Across his nearly seven-decade career, Bell is renowned for his ability to harness the qualities of architectural glass and color, creating distinct optical effects.
Standing regally to greet visitors to LongHouse is Renée Cox’s “Soul Culture Statue” (2025), the first public art commission by the NYC-based photographer. The seven-foot-tall sculpture marks the continuation of the artist’s participation in the philosophies of Afrofuturism.
On May 2, “Things that Look Like Magic: Cheryl R. Riley and Wharton Esherick” opens, the third in the series of “full circle” interventions into LongHouse’s domestic space and collections, curated by curator-at-large Glenn Adamson and by curatorial consultant and former director Carrie Rebora Barratt.
Two bronze sculptures by artist William Kentridge are also coming to LongHouse. Returning loans by Mark Mennin, Jill Platner, Kenny Scharf, and Vadis Turner welcome you back. The recent collapse of the Buckminster Fuller “Fly’s Eye Dome” during a winter storm, while heartbreaking and unexpected, is inspiring staff and board to study the piece anew and envision its replacement as an icon of utopia and innovation.