The Heckscher Museum of Art has announced the top awards for Long Island’s Best: Young Artists at The Heckscher Museum. The prestigious competition received 385 entries from a record-breaking 62 high schools across Suffolk and Nassau Counties. The juried selection narrowed the field down to 80 impressive works currently featured in the museum gallery. The exhibition is on view through Sunday, April 15.
The Heckscher Museum will present scholarships and prizes to a number of young artists in Long Island’s Best. The competition’s four top honorees include:
Paulina Trzonkowska, a senior at West Babylon High School, received the Celebrate Achievement Best in Show Award for her colored pencil work titled Too Close.
Isabelle Lin, a junior at Manhasset High School, received Second Place, the Judith Sposato Memorial Prize, for her painting, Two Flags.
Estefanie Arrue, a senior at Hicksville High School, received Third Place, the Hadley Prize,
for Female Reconstruction, a mixed media work.
Rico Ford, a senior at Valley Stream Central High School, received Fourth Place for the colored pencil work, Pair of Kings.
Now in its 22st year, Long Island’s Best is a hallmark of the Heckscher Museum’s education programs. This juried exhibition is the only one of its kind on Long Island that provides students the opportunity to exhibit their artwork in a prominent museum and to be featured in a full-color catalog. Museum visitors are treated to exceptional artwork by talented emerging artists.
Jurors for the exhibition were Lisa Chalif, curator at The Heckscher Museum of Art, and guest juror Doug Reina, a notable Long Island artist and 2014 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant recipient.
“For high school students, this is a rare and exciting opportunity to put their skills to the ultimate test and show the world who they are. This is where you bring your A game,” said Reina. “This is their first taste of what life in the contemporary art world is really like. The ‘creative pressure’ gives these young people terrific experience as they become the next generation of the world’s artists.”
In addition to the gallery exhibition, visitors can see all of the artwork submitted to the competition on a digital display that will run for the entirety of the exhibition. Mitchells, the venerable Huntington-based department store, will display select images from Long Island’s Best in their windows on Main Street beginning in mid-April.
The Long Island’s Best educational experience begins with students visiting the Museum during the school year and choosing a work of art as a point of inspiration. Students submit their original work of art along with a detailed artist statement.
“Every year, the caliber of artwork is more impressive and the artists’ statements increasingly more creative and thoughtful. It is a challenge to choose the best of the best from hundreds of entries,” saidDirector of Education Joy Weiner.
The Heckscher Museum of Art is located at 2 Prime Ave. in Huntington. For more information about this and other exhibits, go to www.hackscher.org.
