The New York-based FLAG Art Foundation and the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York, have announced a significant expansion of their partnership that will bring three collaborative exhibitions annually to the Hamptons museum from 2026 through 2030. The exhibitions will be jointly curated by teams from both organizations and displayed in two adjoining galleries at the museum, with the inaugural show featuring works by renowned artist Ellsworth Kelly set to open in March 2026.

This expanded collaboration builds upon the successful FRESH PAINT exhibition series that launched in 2024, which showcased previously unshown works by contemporary artists in single-work exhibitions. The partnership proved so successful that both institutions decided to broaden their cooperation significantly. "Teamwork and working together is something that I have always cherished, and much of my business career has been driven by partnerships," FLAG Art Foundation founder Glenn Fuhrman explained in a recent interview. "FLAG is certainly built on the nature of partnerships. We're all bringing together different things."

Parrish Art Museum Executive Director Mónica Ramírez-Montagut echoed this sentiment, stating, "It's worked very well, which is why we are expanding." As part of the enhanced partnership, the museum's Associate Curator of Exhibitions position will now be officially renamed The FLAG Art Foundation Associate Curator of Contemporary Art. This newly designated role will be held by Scout Hutchinson, who joined the Parrish in October 2024 and has already collaborated extensively with FLAG on several Fresh Paint exhibitions.

Ramírez-Montagut explained that she suggested the named position as a talent retention strategy, noting that "as a regional museum hitting above its weight, with very talented curators doing tremendous work, we need to make sure that we continue to be attractive to museum professionals and keep them working at a regional level." Hutchinson has frequently conducted studio visits with FLAG's director Jonathan Rider as part of organizing the exhibition series, with many shows being co-curated by the pair.

The Kelly exhibition, produced in collaboration with the artist's estate and his gallery Matthew Marks, holds special significance for the partnership. "Ellsworth spent a lot of time in the Hamptons. He knew and loved the community very well," Fuhrman noted. Ramírez-Montagut added that they chose Kelly as the inaugural artist partly because of his connections to the East End, as the museum often highlights artists with ties to this part of Long Island.

Fuhrman's relationship with the Parrish spans over a decade, beginning during his regular visits to the Hamptons since graduating college. He developed a friendship with the museum's previous director, Terrie Sultan, which led to a long-term loan of two Roy Lichtenstein sculptures, "Tokyo Brushstroke I & II" (1994), which have been displayed outside the museum since 2014. He also loaned other significant works, including Isa Genzken's "Two Orchids" (2015/16).

When Sultan departed in 2021, Fuhrman initially thought his involvement with the museum might diminish, as often happens during leadership transitions. However, Ramírez-Montagut reached out to him shortly after beginning her tenure in 2022. "From the very beginning, I walked out of that first meeting saying, 'This is an exciting moment for the museum. This is going to be a new vision, a new eye toward the future,'" Fuhrman recalled. "I was excited to see if I could just even be a little bit supportive."

The Fresh Paint series, which emerged from these initial conversations, operates differently from traditional museum programming. Staged in the museum's lobby and open to the public free of charge, the exhibitions are based on FLAG's Spotlight initiative and have featured single-work shows by artists including Lauren Halsey, Derrick Adams, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Raven Halfmoon, and Rudolf Stingel. The series allows for more immediate responsiveness to contemporary art discourse, countering the typical museum practice of planning exhibitions years in advance.

"We were missing having that finger on the pulse, being there with the national discourse, and being able to be responsive to what's happening with more immediacy," Ramírez-Montagut explained. She emphasized that the Parrish serves dual audiences: the year-round East End community and the wealthy summer residents, many of whom are part of the international art world. "The Parrish is an institution with two arms: the left arm is the year-round community that we're there to serve, and the right arm is programming art of the highest caliber possible to be able to meet the expectations of art experts, many of whom come to the Hamptons in the summer."

The new expanded partnership will feature three exhibitions annually, with the first typically running from February or March to June, the second from July to October or November, and the third during the holiday season. This schedule ensures year-round high-quality programming that serves both local residents and seasonal visitors. "The partnership allows us to start building that high-caliber program through the whole year," Ramírez-Montagut noted.

This collaboration represents part of FLAG's broader commitment to supporting contemporary art through institutional partnerships. Since 2018, Fuhrman has partnered with fellow collector Suzanne Deal Booth on the Suzanne Deal Booth/FLAG Art Foundation Prize, which awards $200,000 biennially along with solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Austin and FLAG in New York. Fuhrman sees the Parrish partnership as a potential model for other museums, similar to the support he and his wife Amanda provided to the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, which enabled that museum to offer free admission.

"If this leads to five other partnerships between private foundations and five other museums around the country, more power to it," Fuhrman stated. "That just leads to better exhibitions, better support for museums, better support for artists. That would be a great victory for us." Ramírez-Montagut concluded that the partnership "not only checks a lot of boxes, but it does it in a different way that perhaps museums are not so used to operating. That opens the possibilities for other museums to see that there are different ways of operating."