EXHIBITIONS

The Heckscher Museum of Art is dedicated to enriching the lives of students through dynamic connections between works of art and valuable hands-on learning experiences. Our active School Discovery Program engages 6,000 students from schools throughout Long Island each year. To further encourage the use of the museum as a rich resource in a high school student’s life we developed our Arts-in-Education initiative, Long Island’s Best: Young Artists at the Heckscher. This program culminates in a two-week long exhibition of works by outstanding high school art students from throughout Long Island.

Invitational letters are sent each year to every school district throughout Nassau and Suffolk county, as well as private and parochial schools. Ninth through twelfth grade high school art students are encouraged to participate in our program. Schools are offered the option of attending one of our School Discovery Programs (a two hour in-depth gallery tour and hands-on art experience), sending students to the museum on their own time, or both. Visiting students are then asked to create their own original artworks that are inspired by works of art viewed at the Heckscher.

We ask the participating students to write twenty-five to fifty word statements connecting their works with their sources of inspiration at the Heckscher. The students are further asked to submit their works in a professional manner: matted, framed and ready to hang or in the case of sculptural works with an accompanying pedestal. Our Chief Curator then carefully selects the works for the exhibition. More than 180 entries were submitted for this year’s exhibition with the final selection of 82 works representing 27 high schools from 25 school districts across Long Island.