A Talk and New Classes

James Casebere, an American artist whose photographs are on view in the exhibition “Image Building: How Photography Transforms Architecture” at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, will discuss his work with Terrie Sultan, the museum’s director, tomorrow at 6 p.m. as part of the series “Inter-Sections: The Architect in Conversation.”

For the past 30 years, Mr. Casebere has constructed table-sized interiors and exteriors, based on architectural, art historical, and cinematic sources, which he photographs in his studio. For example, a 2017 exhibition at the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York City, “Emotional Architecture,” featured scale-model re-creations of designs by Luis Barragan, a Mexican architect.

Tickets are $12, free for students and members, and include museum admission.

To provide a convenient weekend schedule of art classes for adults, the Parrish has announced two new art-making opportunities on Saturdays. Beginning this week, from 1 to 3 p.m., Eric Dever, a Parrish collection artist, will lead an open studio inspired by that collection and the current exhibition on the first Saturday of each month. 

Beginning on June 9, Mary O’Malley will lead Sculpting Nature, a three-session workshop on consecutive Saturdays from 2 to 4:30 p.m. Participants will be shown basic to intermediate slip-casting and mold-making techniques. All skill levels will be welcomed, and materials will be provided. The fee is $190, $155 for members. Registration is at parrishart.org.

Art Groove in Springs

The eighth annual Art Groove is bringing its signature mixture of music, performance, and visual art to Ashawagh Hall in Springs on Saturday and Sunday. A reception with live music by the King Bees will take place on Saturday from 6 to 11 p.m., and a tea dance will happen on Sunday afternoon from 3 to 5.

Participating artists are Hans Van de Bovenkamp, Charles Waller, David Geiser, Phyllis Hammond, Geralyne Lewandowski, Anahi DeCanio, Michael McDowell, Joyce Riamondo, Laura Benjamin, Rosalind Brenner, Michael Cardacino, Gerry Giliberti, Barbara Bilotta, Frank Latorre, Beth Barry, Ingrid Torjesen, Greta Watson, and Mark Zimmerman.

Four at Folioeast

Folioeast will open its last show of the season at Malia Mills on Main Street in East Hampton with a reception on Saturday from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. “Sky, Sea, Land” will continue through April 29.

The exhibition will include photographs by Scott Farrell and Jaime Lopez, paintings by Anne Raymond, and pencil drawings by Barbara Thomas. The artists’ interpretations of landscape will range from the abstract to the more literal, according to a release. The gallery will be open on Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. or by appointment with [email protected].

“Romeo and Juliet” was always one of Shakespeare’s most popular works, valued for its romantic intensity. The First Folio print edition, which was chained to a shelf in the Bodelian Library at Oxford University for decades after its publication in 1623, had pages rubbed thin with use by eager readers. The most worn page, it was reported, was the parting of Romeo and Juliet at dawn, when they have consummated their marriage and Romeo must flee into exile.

“Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day / It was the nightingale and not the lark / That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear,” Juliet cries, desperate to convince her lover to stay a while longer.

Precise delivery of such transcendent language that lifts the story to the level of unforgettable, is not always found in the punk love rendition of “Romeo and Juliet” at Guild Hall in East Hampton, which will run through Sunday. Directed by Josh Gladstone, the theater’s artistic director, who also plays the Capulet pere, the revival stays true to the original text while the staging turns the world’s greatest love story into a big, participatory party that is mostly thumping good fun for younger audiences. 

High-gloss dance sequences and strobe lighting help keep them engrossed. David M. Brandenburg, a sound designer, has curated an original soundtrack and rock samplings, evocative not just of hormonal teens rutting under foliage, but of the precise era when bands such as the Arctic Monkeys came to the public’s attention via the internet. There are also good, energetic fight scenes and exceptional video projections that transform the John Drew Theater into a graffiti-covered neighborhood, a light-dappled orchard, and even a canvas for emoticon-like images such as beating hearts and doom-spelling skulls. 

In addition to Mr. Bradenburg for the music, kudos to Dan Renkin for excellent fight choreography (he also plays Friar Laurence onstage), Kate Mueth, who plays the Nurse too, for her peppy dance choreography, Raye Levine for the scenic and set design, Joe Brondo for his projections and computer graphics, and Sebastian Paczynski for pulling it all together as the technical director. Technically speaking, it’s a stunning achievement.

Emotionally, however, the actors — seven of whom are high school students and as yet to blossom onstage — never quite manage to tease the meaning out of Shakespeare or display a way with the verse that answers its soaring poetry. Lines are mostly hurriedly delivered, as though speaking a foreign language known as Elizabethan English. Incidentally, Shakespeare’s audiences often didn’t know the meaning of words uttered in his plays, since the Bard is credited for inventing over 700 words. Instead, it was the sounds and pictures the locution created that kept viewers enthralled for hours.

But Mr. Gladstone’s “Romeo and Juliet” does connect with adolescents and the importance of this should be noted. Theater for young audiences groans under the burden of its responsibility to keep the future engaged. Shakespeare for young audiences doubles that pressure, requesting an engagement not only with the future, but also with the past. So why bother? Well, for starters, Shakespeare is the only author that America’s public high school students must read, specifically mandated in the Common Core English requirements. American heavyweights such as Hemingway, Twain, and Steinbeck are left to a teacher’s discretion.

Only the smallest of children will be unaware of Shakespeare’s timeless story involving a pair of star-crossed lovers, so this is for them: Romeo Montague (played by Alex Might) drops in on a party held by his family’s arch rivals, the Capulets, and falls instantly in love with a girl, not realizing she is Juliet Capulet, the young lady of the house. His love is returned and the pair vow to marry secretly the next day. But an unfortunate sword fight leaves two young men dead and Romeo is banished because of his crime. This is followed by a faked suicide, a life-or-death message that never arrives, and the quintessential unhappy ending.

At Guild Hall, certain performances deliver the necessary pathos to bring these characters to life. Frankie Bademci, a junior at the East Hampton High School, pulls off a wonderfully funny Peter, the Nurse’s dimwitted servant. 

Red-haired and luminously pale, this Juliet, played by 21-year-old Olivia De Salvo, is like a brightly glowing candle amid the strobe lights and techie high jinks. She makes the balcony scene simply touching with an appealing Bambi presence and some good bits of giddy business. She is truly teenage. And until her flame is extinguished in the final scene, it does give a lovely light. 

But Charlie Westfal is the show’s most unrepentant scene-stealer as a boisterous Mercutio, all swaggering laddishness. While several of the cast seem doomed by the diction, Mr. Westfal’s performance as Romeo’s cousin is confident and committed to the point where he is missed after his exit from the story.

According to Gregory Doran, the artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, when actors deliver Shakespeare’s language with passion and engagement, even children who may not pick up every word can follow a story and be transported. 

If that’s true, it’s a shame that engaging the young in this production had to come at the expense of entertaining the more seasoned. But any attempt to please both age groups is eradicated in the first half when Ms. Mueth as the Nurse walks up to the audience and asks, “What’s his name?” pointing to Romeo who has just exited. “Oh come on,” she scolds the adults, who are too busy cringing to answer, “we’re an hour into the show and you don’t even know who the play is about?” 

Guild Hall’s “Romeo and Juliet” lasts almost three and a half hours, including a 15-minute break, and it was reassuring that the dozen or so school-age children in the audience on Friday seemed captivated enough by the energy and good fun of it all. According to their parents, none asked to leave midway and were genuinely happy to stay and feel the love. The same was not true for the adults; several disappeared for good during the intermission. 

“Romeo and Juliet” plays at Guild Hall tomorrow through Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets cost $25, $23 for members, and $10 for students.

A Spring Critique

The Victor D’Amico Institute of Art will hold a two-day spring critique on Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. each day at the Mabel and Victor D’Amico Studio and Archive on Napeague’s Lazy Point.

Artists ages 16 and older can provide two to four artworks that can be displayed on an easel or a 24-inch tabletop and easily transported the day of the event. Paintings, drawings, sculpture, photographs, prints, and digital artwork are acceptable.

Two artists, George Negroponte, on Saturday, and Michael Rosch, on Sunday, will conduct critiques of each piece with its artist and fellow participants. A tour of the studio and archive with Christopher Kohan, president of the institute, will be offered, and light refreshments will follow the discussion and tour. The program is free, but advance registration is required at 631-267-3172.

New at Drawing Room

“Spring Forward,” an exhibition of work by 10 artists working in a range of mediums, will open on Saturday at the Drawing Room in East Hampton and remain on view through May 7.

The established artists John Alexander, Robert Harms, Laurie Lambrecht, Kathryn Lynch, Aya Miyatake, and Jean Pagliuso will be joined by four artists with studios on the East End who are new to the gallery: Gustavo Bonevardi, Hector Leonardi, John Torreano, and Fiona Waterstreet. Conceived as a preview of work to be featured in the gallery’s 2018 season, the show will include painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography.

Group Show at Nightingale

The Sara Nightingale Gallery in Sag Harbor will open “No Longer Supported,” an exhibition of work by 16 artists, with a reception on Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. The show will continue through April 19.

The exhibition’s title refers to the idea that “support systems and structures we were once accustomed to are failing us,” including “infrastructure, government, technology, and nature.” The resulting sense of urgency has led to the selection of artworks that are time-sensitive, according to the gallery.

Participating artists are Stephanie Brody-Lederman, Peter Buchman, Darlene Charneco, Bill Claps, Rossa Cole, James Croak, Rose Marie Cromwell, Barbara Friedman, Shirley Irons, Christian Little, Elena Lyakir, Christa Maiwald, Bonnie Rychlak, Maggie Simonelli, Libby Wadsworth, and Ross Watts.

Three at Ashawagh Hall

“Springtones,” a show of work by Phyllis Chillingworth, Annie Sessler, and John Todaro, will be on view at Ashawagh Hall in Springs on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday from 10 to 5. Juggling and live music from 3:30 to 5 on Saturday will be followed by a reception from 5 to 8.

Ms. Chillingworth, who lives in Montauk, expresses her love of nature in oil paintings and watercolors that focus on color and movement. Ms. Sessler will show a selection of her gyotaku fish prints as well as some new charcoal drawings. Mr. Todaro will be represented by recent color and black-and-white landscape photographs and abstractions.

Rachel Deacon at RJD

“Seductive Reasoning,” an exhibition featuring paintings by Rachel Deacon, will open on Sunday at RJD Gallery in Bridgehampton and continue through April 8. Ms. Deacon, who lives and works in London, paints stylized, often playful or seductive female figures. While she is often inspired by short stories or poems, her paintings are not illustrative but rather suggestive of narratives that retain some mystery.

Paintings by Jack Gerber and Charlotta Janssen, whose work approaches figurative painting with stylized technique, will also be shown.

“Premium Blend” in Bridge

The White Room Gallery in Bridgehampton is presenting “Premium Blend,” a group exhibition featuring work by June Kaplan, Scott Hewett, and Penny Kaplan, through April 8. A reception will be held on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. 

Joe Currie, Arturo Garcia de las Heras, Nicholas Down, Jackie Fuchs, Lauren Loscialo, David Morico, Joss Parker, Seek One, and Ellyn Tucker will also have artwork on view.

Cornelia Foss in Manhattan

An exhibition of paintings by Cornelia Foss will be on view at the Rafael Gallery in Manhattan from today through April 14. A reception will take place on Tuesday from 6 to 8 p.m.

Organized by MM Fine Art, the show includes new work by the painterly realist, whose favorite subjects include the beaches and landscapes of the South Fork, her Bridgehampton garden, and views of Central Park. Both monumental landscapes and smaller canvas sketches will be on view.

In a profile by Jennifer Landes published in The Star (Click for link) on the occasion of Ms. Foss’s 2015 retrospective at Guild Hall, the artist said, “The main thing I’m trying to do is capture the beauty of the world that I’m a part of.”

Inspired by Judaism

“Who Art Thou?” — an exhibition by eight Jewish artists whose work explores their connection to Judaism — will be on view at Congregation Tifereth Israel in Greenport from Sunday through May 20. A reception will be held on Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m.

The show, which honors Robert Strimban, an illustrator and sculptor who died in December, will also include artwork by Meryl Spiegel, Judith Kaufman Weiner, Saul Rosenstreich, Debra Riva, Roberta Garris, Cookie Slade, and Irma Strimban. The gallery will be open Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m.

The Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival will present two programs on Monday as part of its ongoing FilmArts + Forums series. “The Children of Chabannes,” a documentary about a remote French school that sheltered hundreds of Jewish children during World War II, will be shown at 7 p.m. at the Hampton Library in Bridgehampton.

Also at 7, “The Last Fix: An Addict’s Passage From Hell to Hope” will be screened at the Hamptons Bays Senior Center. Southampton Town Justice Deborah Kooperstein from the Southampton Drug Court will speak after the screening, which is sponsored by the Hampton Bays Civic Association.

Some art exhibitions are smart and some are more aesthetically inviting — not just pretty, but captivating — featuring objects that draw one in from across a room. “A Radical Voice: 23 Women” is both. 

Janet Goleas, an artist and curator, intimately understands artistic impulse and when that impulse results in successful works of art. There are 23 successes on display at the Southampton Arts Center, on view through Sunday.

Part of what makes the work in this show so compelling is its underlying motivation. Ms. Goleas said recently that she was asked last year to come up with an idea “that would reflect the world we live in now.” Against a backdrop of women revealing struggles in their work life after years and decades of silence, it became evident to her that artists, particularly women, have traditionally had to scramble and juggle multiple responsibilities to carve out the regular time they need in the studio to create work and fortify their voice.

According to Ms. Goleas, artists often need to close themselves off to develop depth and complexity in their work. “When an artist is working, they’re researching. If you lose that thread of research, you have to start all over again.” Having an uninterrupted stretch of time “reveals things you can’t always get” when you are dipping in and out of a studio practice. “Like with scientists, intense research reveals truth.”

Almond Zigmund spoke to The Star before the show opened and said she had recently returned to the studio after a period of employment at the Watermill Center. One of the reasons she took the job was to have some distance from the studio, to shake up things. Ms. Goleas gave her half of the center’s entry hall for an installation. The strategy worked. Although Ms. Zigmund has always employed light and space in her installations, there was still a great deal of control apparent. Her latest piece, installed on-site with little preparation in the studio, was an experiment in letting go for her. As usual, there is a mix of wall and sculptural elements with an emphasis on pattern, but the overall feeling is more emotive, less precise.

Alice Hope, who has a solo exhibition at East Hampton’s Guild Hall through this weekend, is present here. A hanging piece of gold-toned can tabs goes from lintel to floor and looks almost like seaweed or some other organic material. She has worked with can tabs for a few years, and now seems to be refining her approach. Once satisfied with exploring the aesthetic properties of this commonplace functional item, she has gone to another level in adapting its properties as a medium. In the tight coils of the two pieces placed on the back wall of the last gallery, she has hidden them in plain sight. Yet, she reveals them again in allowing the tubing that holds them in place to fall to the floor, giving the viewer a better apprehension of the components.

This kind of seriality can be seen elsewhere in the galleries in the work of Laurie Lambrecht. Included here are 12 photographs printed on linen called “Bark Cloths,” which have added texture from embroidery. Using organic and natural subject matter in this way, she has produced a hybrid that keeps referring to itself in profound ways. Her choice to print on fabric upends the historical pecking order of photography and other works on paper compared to paintings on canvas or panel and even sculpture. In this grouping, she has transformed her images into objects, but modest ones, simply tacked to the wall with no mat or backing required.

A similar organic and serial approach can be seen in the stoneware piece “Justified” by Toni Ross. A byproduct of her never-let-anything-go-to-waste studio practice, these pieces are formed from scraps of other works. Once only shown vertically, she has recently begun constructing them horizontally, as in the 2016 Parrish Art Museum exhibition “Artists Choose Artists.” As she told The Star last year, this format gives the work movement and the quality of words on a page or “musical pauses and elevations.”

Process is key in all of these artists’ works as it is in the work of Drew Shiflett. She takes her own handmade paper as a launching point, and then pulls out patterns or creates them with mediums such as watercolor, crayon, pencil, and, in these cases, canvas or cheesecloth. Much like Ms. Lambrecht’s works, these still-delicate examples assert structure and endurance, not asking for gravitas so much as claiming it.

Other departures include Bonnie Rychlak, who with Jeanne Silverthorne is showing work that defies the expected. In “Grate of Unintentional” there is familiarity in her cast and carved-wax grate. Ms. Rychlak has emphasized form over function in the past. Here, the grate’s function is highlighted with a plastic pipe with drawn droplets of water attached to it by a string. While these elements highlight the utility of the subject matter, they also encourage viewers to speed past that interpretation to an emotional response.

Their videos titled “Consequences” give off a nostalgic, “Fluxus” air. When installed, video works are so often disruptive, with dedicated viewing areas, flowing black curtains, cutouts in walls, or at least large high-definition screens that take up lots of wall space. These compact pieces — one of which uses a simple hand trick and sniffling noises to simulate crying — are displayed on tiny personal DVD players set on a pedestal. The artists send so many mixed messages in how to interact with them that the choice to become their witness is a resolute act. Video is rarely part of the East End creative parlance. While it can easily overwhelm, it would be wonderful to see more of it here.

With 23 artists, there is no way to get to all of them in detail, but the contributions of Olive Ayhens, Amanda Church, Martha Clippinger, Connie Fox, Regina Gilligan, Tamara Gonzales, Jacqueline Gourevitch, Lisa Hein, Priscilla Heine, Hilary Helfant, Elana Herzog, Judith Linhares, Erika Ranee, Judy Richardson, Zina Saro-Wiwa, and Jude Tallichet are no less. With so many things happening this weekend for the Hamptons Arts Network’s THAW Fest, this exhibition should not be missed.

The Hampton Theatre Company in Quogue is holding an open non-Equity audition for the role of George in its spring production of Marc Camoletti’s bedroom farce “Don’t Dress for Dinner” on Sunday and Monday by appointment only with the director, George A. Loizides, [email protected].

The character is described as a big, strong man in his 30s who is very protective of his wife, Suzette. Rehearsals will begin on April 16, and the production will run from May 24 through June 10 at the Quogue Community Hall.

In addition to the usual signs of spring on the South Fork — tree buds, new birdsongs, peepers — this year there is a new harbinger, the Hamptons Arts Weekend Festival, or THAW Fest. The full weekend of events is sponsored by the newly formed Hamptons Arts Network, a group of nonprofits that have banded together to share programs and advocacy efforts.

According to Andrea Grover, one of the founders of the network, the festival is based on a walking tour the art spaces in SoHo started a couple of years ago, which “had visitors in the thousands the first year and now has even more. It’s based on a ‘if you build it they will come’ principle.” Late March is “a time of year people have cabin fever. They want to get out and see other human beings, think about the spring season.”

For those who might come “from away,” it’s also the time of year when hotels are not fully booked and seasonal rates have not yet kicked in. Restaurants and merchants can also benefit, Ms. Grover said earlier this year.

Highlights from the weekend will include special programming such as the appearance of the Upright Citizens Brigade Touring Company at the Southampton Arts Center, the Hamptons International Film Festival’s “Masterclass: Romeo and Juliet,” an Elton John tribute band at Bay Street Theater, two concerts presented by the Southampton African American Museum at the Southampton Historical Museum, documentary screenings by the Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival, and tours of the newly restored Thomas Moran Studio in East Hampton.

The Parrish Art Museum will have a kickoff event tomorrow with a night of poetry readings inspired by the stories told by community members during a story circle at the museum in January. Marya Martin, the artistic director of the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, will help emphasize the collaborative nature of the weekend by playing Debussy’s “Syrinx,” a solo flute piece, prior to the readings. The event is $12, free for Parrish members. Reservations are encouraged.

Venues typically closed for the winter will open their doors this weekend, including the Madoo Conservancy, which will have a special show of the late Robert Dash’s paintings on display. LongHouse Reserve will be open on Saturday with docent tours from 2 to 3 p.m. At the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center there will be film screenings on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and a family day and open studio on Sunday from noon to 4.

The Watermill Center will have a potpourri of programs including a tour to morrow at 2 and an exhibition opening of text-based works from House of Trees from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. Its monthly In Process open rehearsals will continue on Saturday with Anne Carson at 1 p.m. and Tania Bruguera at 3:30. A family workshop related to the exhibition will take place Sunday.

Following is a breakdown of other events that will continue this weekend. Events are free unless otherwise noted. Details on children’s and family activities can be found on today’s Schools page, and more information can be found in The Star’s calendars section.

Theater

Guild Hall’s final weekend of “Romeo and Juliet” performances will begin tomorrow with a special post-show talk by its Teen Arts Council. Showtime is 7 p.m. for all performances. Tickets for this contemporary post-punk interpretation of Shakespeare’s classic love story are $25, or $23 for members, with a special student rate of $10. They are available through Guild Hall’s website and at the box office.

Those interested in “Romeo and Juliet” from a film perspective will enjoy the Hamptons International Film Festival’s Masterclass: Romeo and Juliet on Saturday at 4 p.m. at Guild Hall. An award-winning filmmaker will compare the cinematic approaches of Franco Zeffirelli in 1968 to Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 version in an hourlong examination of the two films. 

At the Southampton Cultural Center, Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” will be onstage tomorrow through Sunday at 7 p.m. Sunday’s 2 p.m. matinee is sold out. Tickets, available at the door, are $28, $15 for students. 

Comedy

Tomorrow, Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theater will present an All Star Stand Up Comedy night hosted by Joseph Vecsey at 8. Mr. Vecsey’s guests will be up-and-coming comedians such as James Myers, Clayton Fletcher, and Wellie Jackson. Tickets are $30 and available online or at the box office.

The Upright Citizens Brigade’s Touring Company will bring unscripted, anything-can-happen comedy to the Southampton Arts Center for the first time on Saturday at 7 p.m. The improvisational troupe has launched several careers since its founding by a group that included Amy Poehler. The $20 ticket price includes wine and refreshments. Tickets are available online, by phone, or at the door depending on availability.

Music

On Saturday, Bay Street has Bennie and the Jets: An Elton John Tribute at 8 p.m. Tickets are $30. 

The Southampton African American Museum will present two concerts at the Southampton Historical Museum on Sunday. Taylor Burgess, a jazz vocalist with a broad range of singing styles, will perform first at 1 p.m. Showers of Blessings, a gospel choir from King’s Chapel Church in Southampton, follows at 2 p.m.

Those willing to travel can head to the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center to see Gene Casey and the Lone Sharks play on Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $33 for reserved seating and can be purchased on the center’s website.

Film

The Hamptons International Film Festival will have a family screening of “The Breadwinner” on Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Southampton Arts Center. The animated film tells the story of an 11-year-old girl who disguises herself as a boy to help her family survive after her father is arrested in Afghanistan under the Taliban in 2001.

The Hamptons Take 2 Film Festival will screen “Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight” by Wendy Keys at the Southampton Arts Center tomorrow at 8 p.m. A conversation with Ms. Keys and Walter Bernard, a designer who worked closely with Mr. Glaser, will follow. On Sunday, Richard Kane’s “I Know a Man . . . Ashley Bryan,” about an African-American poet, painter, illustrator, and puppet maker who lives on the remote Cranberry Islands in Maine, will be screened at 2 p.m. at Bay Street Theater.

At 3, LongHouse Reserve will show “Larsenworld” at Bay Street. The 23-minute film focuses on Jack Lenor Larsen, LongHouse’s founder, and the world he created at the singular nature preserve and sculpture garden that is also his residence.

Talks

The East Hampton Historical Society’s final talk in its winter lecture series will be presented tomorrow at 7 p.m. at Clinton Academy. The topic to be discussed by Richard Barons and Jeff Heatley will be “Fever in Montauk: Camp Wikoff and the East Hampton Community,” about the encampment where soldiers were quarantined after returning from the Spanish-American War. A reception precedes the talk at 6:30.

“Cruising the Island: Long Island’s Maritime Heritage” will be the topic addressed by Tara Rider, a lecturer at Stony Brook University, at the Southampton Historical Museum on Saturday at 2 p.m.

Tours

In Sag Harbor, the Eastville Community Historical Society’s Heritage House will have an East End Artists Tour from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. on Saturday.

The newly restored Thomas Moran Studio in East Hampton will be open for tours from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. The tour will include a discussion about the printmaking process from a local artist and the studio’s antique etching press. A small group of etchings by Moran and his wife, Mary Moran, acquired by the East Hampton Historical Society this past year will be on display. The house is on Main Street.

Bay Street Theater will give a free behind-the-scenes tour of its backstage and technical areas on Sunday at 11 a.m.

The Southampton Historical Museum’s Rogers Mansion will be open all weekend for self-guided tours, with special candlelight tours from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Admission is $4 during the day and $10 after 4 p.m.

Art and Exhibitions

Dia’s Dan Flavin Art Institute in Bridgehampton will be open tomorrow through Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. On view are a special exhibition of work by Mary Heilmann and the permanent installation of Flavin works.

The exhibits at the Eastville Community Historical Society in Sag Harbor will be open from 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturday. Refreshments will be served.

East Hampton’s Guild Hall will be open tomorrow and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. It will be the last weekend to see solo exhibitions of work by Hiroyuki Hamada and Alice Hope and a permanent collection show of work selected by Bryan Hunt. Ms. Hope will speak about her work in the gallery on Saturday at 2 p.m.

It is also the last week for “A Radical Voice: 23 Women” at the Southampton Arts Center, which is reviewed in this issue.

On view at the Parrish Art Museum are a new show, “Image Building: How Photography Transforms Architecture,” and permanent collection shows highlighting the Parrish’s five-year anniversary in its Water Mill building.

The Shinnecock Nation Cultural Center and Museum will be open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Its exhibits cover the history of Shinnecock and other East Coast woodland cultures.

For more than 80 years, the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church’s organ has added its voice to innumerable services, weddings, funerals, and concerts, including regular accompaniment of the Choral Society of the Hamptons. But recently it has started to show its age.

The organ, built in 1934 by the Austin Organ Company of Hartford, has developed many problems with its miles of electrical wiring and numerous contacts and switches. “It’s functioning in that era’s technology. The copper wiring with cloth and wax insulation is a major concern,” Tom White, the church’s organist, said last week. “It’s like a house that was wired in the 1920s.” 

The problems cause individual notes and pipes to fail during Sunday morning services. “Sometimes there are too many pipes not speaking, so a musical scale can’t be played,” he said. In addition, at times the entire lower keyboard will fail to play at all.

Now, a concert of musical theater, art songs, and opera that describes “A Journey Through Love” will be presented at the church on Sunday afternoon at 2 featuring a Southampton tenor, Douglas Sabo. Joining him will be Alexandra Whitfield, a soprano, and Matthew Lobaugh, a pianist. Proceeds from the concert will benefit the church’s pipe organ restoration fund.

The money will help with the work necessary to restore the massive instrument and bring it up to contemporary standards. The original organ console, which houses the two keyboards, pedal board, and controls for the various sets of pipes, will be replaced by a newer used console, which will have fiber optic cable and circuit boards and a solid-state control system.

Another obvious problem is that serious air leaks have developed in the wind chests on which the pipes sit in the organ loft, and the sound is loud enough that it can be heard from the pews downstairs as a “whoosh.” For those closer to the organ it might be a more noticeable rush of sound. 

“We turn the organ off during the sermon so you can hear the pastor’s message,” Mr. White said. As another major part of the project, the wind chests will be carefully disassembled and reglued, and some parts will be replaced.

The organ has 16 ranks, or sets of pipes, with each rank having a distinctive tone color or pitch, plus the chimes and harp, which are two percussion ranks. At present there are a total of 1,127 individual pipes in the instrument. One colorful set of pipes, called the oboe, will have 12 new larger pipes added to make a lower octave and enrich the bass sound. This will involve adding a new wind chest, mounted inside the organ chamber.

All of the work that needs to be done is detailed, labor-intensive, and requires skilled technicians. The total projected cost is about $134,000, of which about $73,000 has been raised. By contrast, an all-new organ to replace the current one could easily cost $500,000 to $750,000. A contract has just been signed with the Austin company for part of the project, and work has begun off-site preparing the new console, software, and control systems.

The concert, to be held on the first weekend of spring, will feature a seasonally appropriate theme. “We were trying to think of different program ideas other than the standard classical music concert,” Mr. Sabo said last week. “Traditionally there are four or five different sections about a theme, whether it’s love or longing or loss. Often early music is done at the beginning and contemporary music is done at the end.”

“So, when we thought of love, we said, let’s not just do songs about love, because it’s a little boring. We wanted to create something that starts from the beginning with people who are out of love or no longer love, and moves throughout the program to finding love. And we’re using the songs in a way that fits that theme, that flows for both of our characters, so there’s an overall arc.”

The music ranges from Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Schubert to Kurt Weill, in solos and duets. Asked if anything on the program stands out for him personally, Mr. Sabo said, “The duets are a lot of fun.” He mentioned “I Can Do Anything Better Than You” from Irving Berlin’s “Annie Get Your Gun,” “You’re the Top” from Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes,” and numbers by Sondheim and Donizetti. “I think those will be the highlights,” he said.

Mr. Sabo appeared with the Southold Opera Company as Prosper in “La Vie Parisienne” in December, and before that as St. Brioche in “The Merry Widow.” Recently he was also in the Bronx Opera Company’s production of Mozart’s “The Abduction From the Seraglio,” and he has performed with the Golden Rose Opera Company in Queens and the Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble in Manhattan.

He met Ms. Whitfield when they were graduate students at the Longy School of Music of Bard College, and they became friends and performance partners. They began performing together in and around Boston, and continued to do so after having earned master’s degrees. They have also done interactive performances for schools in and around New York City and Boston and at the Hayground School in Bridgehampton two summers ago.

Ms. Whitfield complements Mr. Sabo in that she leans a bit more toward art song, while he is somewhat more inclined to opera, he said, although they are both versatile artists. Recent engagements of hers include “Lady of the Camellias” with the Boston Ballet and Fauré’s Requiem with the Cantata Singers Chamber Series in Boston. Other roles have been Josephine in “H.M.S. Pinafore” with the Nahant Music Festival and Zerlina in “La Serva Padrona” with Opera New Hampshire.

The two singers will be accompanied by Mr. Lobaugh, a freelance pianist and vocal coach from New York City, where he has served as music director for the Citywide Youth Opera and Opera Breve and has been on the staff of Loft Opera NYC. He also holds degrees in both piano and vocal performance from Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

One piece on the program, “Du bist wie eine Blume” by Schumann, will be accompanied by Mr. White on the organ, which he has been playing since he was 10 years old. 

The suggested donation for the concert is $20, and there is no charge for children. Anyone wishing to make a contribution to the organ fund can send it to Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, P.O. Box 3038, Bridgehampton 11932, marked “pipe organ restoration fund.”

Terry Sullivan sings for love, not money. He performed with Pete Seeger for 24 years and made a total of about $500, “because I did some plumbing for him,” Mr. Sullivan explained, referring to his day job. He still has an uncashed check for $34 from the Clearwater Revival for a performance at the festival inspired 40 years ago by Seeger’s desire to clean up the Hudson River.

Given his longtime relationship with Seeger and his circle, it is no surprise that Mr. Sullivan also sings for social justice, and he will do so twice in Sag Harbor this weekend, on Saturday at 5 p.m. at Canio’s Books and on Sunday afternoon at 2 at the Eastville Community Historical Society.

Titled “Laughin’ Just to Keep From Cryin’,” the a cappella concert will feature both songs from the Irish independence fight and those from other civil rights struggles. “What I’m doing is, I’m showing the commonality across the globe. All these civil rights struggles are usually seen as disparate and separate and unrelated.” The links across cultures can be seen in “coded songs,” a selection of which will be included in both shows.

Coded songs delivered their messages in ways recognized by the oppressed but not by their oppressors. One example is “Nell Flaherty’s Drake,” which dates from 1803, the year Robert Emmet was hung by the British. Emmet was unusual in that he was a Protestant, Anglo-Irish aristocrat who started a group called United Irishmen in part because even the Irish gentry were not immune from English tyranny.

“The drake” was a coded reference to Emmet, and the song included lyrics such as “Bad luck to the robber, be he drunk or sober/that murdered Nell Flaherty’s beautiful drake.” As Mr. Sullivan explained, “You could sing this song in front of a British policeman anywhere in the empire, and he wouldn’t know what you were talking about.”

“Mbube” is another coded song, written and recorded in 1939 by Solomon Linda, a South African musician. “Mbube” means “lion” and was the nickname for Shaka Zulu, the Zulu monarch who was assassinated in 1828. “What Solomon Linda was doing is the same thing the Irish were doing with the drake,” Mr. Sullivan said. “Because the English didn’t speak Zulu, Linda was calling Shaka Zulu back from the early 1800s to the 1940s to fight apartheid.”

The original recording of “Mbube” was discovered in the early 1950s by the musicologist Alan Lomax and given to his friend Seeger, who retitled it “Wimoweh” and recorded it with the Weavers. It became a hit under the title of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” after it was rewritten for and recorded by the Tokens in 1961.

Mr. Sullivan noted that there are many coded songs in the African-American tradition. One, “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” was supposedly used in the antebellum South to pass geographic escape directions from person to person, allowing them to find their way north from Alabama. While the title refers to the hollowed-out gourd used by slaves as a water dipper, it could also be interpreted as a reference to the Big Dipper constellation, which points north.

Other Irish songs in Mr. Sullivan’s repertoire include “Óró, Sé do Bheatha ‘Bhaile,” the modern version of which was written by Patrick Pearse, one of the martyrs of the 1916 Easter Uprising. An earlier version of the song had welcomed Prince Charles to Ireland in the 18th century in the mistaken belief he would help the Irish. Pearse turned to the 16th century to conjure up as an inspiration Grace O’Malley, the “pirate queen” who was the most famous woman in Ireland in the second half of that century and so powerful she was received at court by Elizabeth I. The song, which called upon the legendary pirate to fight with and negotiate for the Irish, is still popular in Ireland today.

Mr. Sullivan’s knowledge and experience of music is as deep and reliable as his wit, and the concerts are likely to be peppered with entertaining and informative anecdotes from his years of friendship with the Seegers as well as little-known facts about the material in his set list.

During the course of his more-than-40-year curatorial career, most of it spent at the Museum of Modern Art, Kynaston McShine, who died in January at 82, organized some of the most important contemporary art exhibitions of his time. He retired as MoMA’s chief curator in charge in 2008.

Less widely known than his groundbreaking exhibitions is his early and ongoing connection to the East End, especially Springs, where he rented for many years and eventually bought a house on Driftwood Lane.

The artist Robert Harms, who lives in Southampton, elaborated. “For me the loss of Kynaston is really significant in many ways, in part because he was one of the last links to the history of artists, curators, and writers who began to come to the Springs in the 1950s and 1960s. Especially people like Joe LeSueur, Frank O’Hara, Patsy Southgate, and Mary Rattray.” A longtime friend of O’Hara’s, Mr. McShine wrote an introduction to the poet’s book “In Memory of My Feelings.” 

Born into a large, prominent family in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, on Feb. 20, 1935, Mr. McShine attended Queen’s Royal College there before enrolling in Dartmouth College, from which he graduated in 1958. 

He established himself with “Primary Structures: Younger American and British Artists,” one of the first and most important museum exhibitions devoted to Minimalism, which he organized at the Jewish Museum in 1966. Four years later, at the Museum of Modern Art, he curated “Information,” a survey of work by some 130 artists linked by the effort to extend the idea of art beyond traditional categories.

Other major exhibitions included “Marcel Duchamp” (1973), “Robert Rauschenberg” (1977), “Andy Warhol: A Retrospective” (1989), “The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect” (1999), “Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul” (2006), and “Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years” (2007). His commitment to younger and contemporary artists was reflected in the museum’s Projects series, which he launched in 1971 with an installation by Keith Sonnier.

Mr. Sonnier said of that show: “I did a project with Kynaston at MoMA in 1971, his first environmental show for the museum. We followed each other’s work throughout the years and became friends later on when we both spent time in the Hamptons and indulged our shared appreciation of Caribbean food. He will be greatly missed by both our New York City and Hamptons communities.”

Mr. Harms recalled first meeting the curator. “Joe LeSueur brought Kynaston to my small cottage adjacent to the Green River Cemetery for a summer studio visit, and we remained friends over all these years. Springs will be significantly different without Kynaston — his wit, his unique, sometimes brusque charm, and his searing intelligence.”

The artist Billy Sullivan and his partner, Klaus Kertess, who died in 2016, were close friends with Mr. McShine. “I will miss my summers in Springs with him,” said Mr. Sullivan. “One of our routines when I would pick him up was to take a detour along Gerard Drive. Even as he grew increasingly frail, if he wanted to be somewhere, you could count on him being there, and always impeccably dressed.”

While Mr. McShine’s cutting wit was familiar to those who knew him well, so was his kindness, generosity, and loyalty. “When my son, Max, died in 2005 in a paragliding accident,” said Mr. Sullivan, “Kynaston sent me these lines from Frank O’Hara’s notebook: He falls; but even in falling he is higher than those who fly into the ordinary sun.’ ”

He also was especially kind with children, according to the artist George Negroponte, a longtime friend who lives in Springs with Virva Hinnemo, also an artist. “He wanted to know everything. What are they reading? Do they admire Obama? What on earth is crypto currency? My son Viggo was six when we moved to Springs. He and Kynaston met and felt an enormous attachment almost immediately. ‘I think I’m going to be the godfather,’ Kynaston said, and he was.”

Michael Boodro, former editor in chief of Elle Decor, knew Mr. McShine for more than 40 years. “When I first met him, I knew he was famously private, even difficult, and he was notoriously sharp-tongued. But, behind that gruff, even fierce, exterior, was a man of great humor, warmth, and fierce loyalty.”

Mr. Boodro listed opera, theater, poetry, and travel as among Mr. McShine’s passions. “He loved London and he loved Venice. He loved Trinidad, where he grew up, and he loved the Springs. For many years he would rent a small house on Gerard Drive and troop out there every August with assorted friends, a case of wine, and Blossom Dearie CDs.” 

“One of his proudest moments was when he was finally able to buy his own small piece of Springs heaven. There he was most himself, surrounded by his beautiful garden, his endless stacks of books and magazines, with his pool burbling gently in the background and arias wafting out onto the deck.”

Mr. Boodro cited the Museum of Modern Art as Mr. McShine’s greatest passion. “His focus was on not only the original and historic exhibitions for which he was justly acclaimed, but equally on the slow, careful, day-to-day building of the Museum’s collection. He knew virtually every artist, and every collector of modern and contemporary art. He knew every piece they owned, and where each was likely to end up. . . . He regarded each acquisition the museum made as a triumph, each work that went elsewhere as a personal defeat.” 

“He only had good words for MoMA,” according to Mr. Negroponte, who elaborated on Mr. McShine’s curatorial range. “One of the things everybody misses is that there’s a very divided curatorial vision. On the one hand, you have a great commitment to Minimalism, as represented by ‘Primary Structures’ and, later, Richard Serra. . . . But from the early 1970s to 1980, he goes from Marcel Duchamp to ‘Natural Paradise’ to Rauschenberg and Cornell and lays out a whole different range of issues for himself.”

“The Natural Paradise: Painting in America 1800-1950,” which opened in 1976, ranged from the romantic paintings of Washington Allston through the Hudson River School and the Luminists to the New York School. According to a press release, it probed and clarified those attitudes — romantic, transcendental, intent on the sublime — that have linked the aspirations of American artists from Bierstadt and Church to Newman and Rothko.

Writing about the work of Joseph Cornell, whose retrospective he organized in 1980, Mr. McShine said, “Founded in the magic and mystery of the poetic experience, his collages, films, and constructions are affirmations of serenity, recollection, enchantment, beauty, the extraordinary.” 

“He was a big, big presence in the lives of a lot of people,” said Mr. Negroponte. “I’m absolutely floored by how many young people hold his work in such high esteem. I asked him many times if he wanted to do an oral history or something and he always said, ‘The work speaks for itself.’ He did not give many interviews. He didn’t want to deal with the self-promotion side of things.”

The artist Mary Heilmann, who has a house in Bridgehampton, put it very simply: “Kynaston was genius, and I got to see a lot of him while visiting Klaus Kertess and Billy Sullivan. It is sad to see two empty seats at the table at Billy’s house now.”