Nassau County Museum of Art - Overview

Overview

NCMA annually presents major rotating exhibitions, many of which are original to the museum and are organized by the museum’s own curatorial staff. The museum's exhibitions have reached across a broad spectrum of artistic concerns—from European and American art movements, to epochs of American and European history, to the influences of one art form on another and to the impact of Long Island artists on art and design. In addition to these major exhibitions, NCMA mounts smaller original exhibitions in the Library Gallery and the Second Floor galleries and regularly showcases work by today’s artists in the Contemporary Gallery.

NCMA’s collection of more than 600 art objects spans American and European art of the 19th and 20th centuries. Encompassing all types of media, the collection includes works by Rodin, Braque, Vuillard, Bonnard, Lichtenstein, Rivers, Rauschenberg, Chaim Gross, Moses Soyer, Audrey Flack, Frank Stella, George Segal and Alex Katz among many others. Particularly notable are the museum’s holdings of works by Latin American artists of the 20th- and 21st-centuries. Among those represented in this collection are Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta, Fernando Botero, Alejandro Colunga, Luiz Cruz Azeceta, Arnaldo Roche-Rabell and Efrain Almeida.

A major reorganization of the former Tee Ridder Miniatures Museum resulted in a facility that is dedicated to art and art-related activities for children and their families. Reflecting its new mission, the building is now called the Art Space for Children. A grassroots funding campaign has been launched by the museum to expand and completely transform the Art Space for Children.

NCMA's 145 acres constitute one of the largest publicly accessible sculpture gardens on the East Coast. Among the more than 40 sculptures sited on the property to interact with the natural environment are works by Tom Otterness, Alexander Calder, Fernando Botero, Chaim Gross, Alejandro Colunga, Masayuki Nagare, Richard Serra, Manolo Valdes and many others. The Sculpture Park was founded in 1989.

The museum's gardens and walking trails are also notable. Commissioned in 1925 by Frances Frick, an avid horticulturist and garden club member, the Frick Estate’s Formal Gardens have been restored to the original design of the famed landscape architect, Marian Cruger Coffin. Coffin considered these Formal Gardens to be among her finest creations. In recent years, the historic garden trellis and water tower have been restored to original condition. Additionally, many pathways through the 145-acre property are now marked as guided nature trails.