Greenport’s East End Seaport Museum is holding a reopening celebration for the season this Friday, May 22 with revamped gallery space and a new major installation by nationally recognized Shinnecock artist Courtney M. Leonard.
Pictured Above: Courtney M. Leonard with her work from BREACH: Logbook 26 | CONVERGENCE, on display this season at the East End Seaport Museum.
Ms. Leonard has been developing BREACH as an ongoing body of work — the title draws “on the word’s layered meanings: a whale rising through the surface, the legal failure to honor an agreement, the gap in a wall,” according to an announcement from the East End Seaport Museum. “Working across ceramics, video, and installation, each “logbook” in the series documents the relationship between Indigenous communities and the waters they depend on.”
“This chapter, CONVERGENCE, arrives on local ground — engaging directly with Greenport, the Peconic River, and Gardiners Bay to ask what it means for cultures, waters, and histories to meet in a single place,” the museum adds. “Site-specific video, ceramics, and hanging works are installed in dialogue with the museum’s historic Fresnel lens collection, asking new questions of both the space and its visitors.
The museum’s other gallery spaces have also been refreshed for the new season, with the main gallery featuring “Stories from Our Working Waterfront,” curated by Paul Kreiling.
“A floor-to-ceiling map of the East End anchors the exhibition, layered with micro-histories drawn
from deep local knowledge of the region’s maritime past and present,” according to the museum. “The museum’s celebrated Fresnel lens collection — long considered one of its great treasures — receives its most comprehensive presentation to date, with new displays and original research illuminating each piece.”
The museum has also revamped its Children’s Discovery Area with a new experience, All Hands on Deck, where young visitors can explore the sea through microscopes, interactive touchscreens, a restored boat helm, and a rope and knot station. The museum’s gift shop has also been fully renovated and restocked with all-new merchandise for the season.
Friday’s festivities kick off with an exclusive first look for museum members from 5 to 6 p.m., and the galleries will open up to the public at large rom 6 to 8 p.m.
The museum is located at 100 Third Street in Greenport.
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