The Steinberg Museum, located in Hillwood Commons at LIU Post, is home to many different types of art exhibits throughout the year. The museum is currently holding an exhibit from Carol Tabler through March 25. Tabler is a local collector and adjunct professor of art history at Post, who currently teaches continuing education.
The work in Tabler’s collection is that of 19th century French landscape. This exhibit was based on the idea that the 19th century was a period of great revolutionary change in art making. Tabler has built the exhibition based around this great period of change. These paintings are by many different French artists, as early as the 1800s. All of the paintings seen in the display are more than 100 years old.
The idea of this exhibition is to expose the community to high quality artwork. The campus museum holds public lectures and events to explore new ideas.
“Our mission as an institution is to consistently provide a space that explores the visual arts,” said Barbara Applegate, the director of LIU Post’s Steinberg Museum.
Niria Leyva Gutierrez, an assistant professor of art history and museum studies at LIU Post, often takes her art students to visit the museum.
“The museum offers a respite from the demands of daily life or the stress related to academia. In the case of the Tabler exhibition, students are afforded the opportunity to delve deeply into the study of 19th century landscape painting,” said Gutierrez.
“People come in every day with ideas for great exhibitions,” said Applegate.
The museum takes a great deal of time planning for each event and exhibition. Events are planned between two and five years in advance, and the museum is constantly booking and planning events. The museum holds four or five exhibitions each year.
“Right now I’m thinking about the art exhibitions that will take place for the year 2020, because I don’t yet have one,” said Applegate.
Hillwood Commons, the building that houses the Steinberg Museum, was built in 1972 and is one of the few spaces on Long Island that was built specifically for art viewing. Most spaces are retrofitted for viewing art, meaning they are built with a specific idea, but then are changed into a museum, said Applegate. The room which now holds the Museum was originally built with the idea that it would be used for the sole purpose of an art gallery.
Written on the walls of the museum specifically for this exhibition are the words, “L’amour du beau, love of the beautiful.” They denote mutual motivations, those of the collector with a passion for landscape art and those of the landscapist in his choice of a captivating motif.
“I love working here because the events are different each year. I think Tabler’s art is beautiful because of the way it makes you look at art differently,” said Chrissy Christofakis, an LIU Post art therapy student who works in the museum. “I find it relatable to my own life.”
The art in this exhibition is relatable because it shows a number of different real life outdoor scenes, such as a sunset or snow falling in the winter.
“People need to just get the one toe in the door to feel like they own this space,” said Applegate. The first connection with a space and the art that draws them in is what brings people back to the museum. “The thing that I think draws people is the notion of change that occurs 3 or 4 times a year, which is very important to me. The dynamic quality is what should draw people in.”
The LIU Post Steinberg Museum is open from Monday through Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and on Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Tabler exhibit runs through March 25.
This article was originally published in the Pioneer, the award-winning student newspaper of LIU Post, www.liupostpioneer.com, and is republished here by Blank Slate Media with the permission of the Pioneer.
