Early on an autumn afternoon, an untitled 1990 abstraction by Esteban Vicente in the new Parrish Art Museum presented a smudged block of azure hovering over brushy patches of red-orange and umber. Two hours later, the angle of the sunlight coming into the gallery had shifted, and the new light made the warm colors catch fire and the blue sour and recede.
The change was unusual. While many museums allow daylight to enter their galleries, they typically filter it to a neutral glow. The Parrish lets the coastal light of New York's East End of Long Island color the experience of the work on view. Shifting and tonal, light enters the gallery as it might have entered Vicente's Bridgehampton barn-turned-studio in the mid'20th century. 'You find many artists who work here because of the landscape and the light in this place,' says Ascan Mergenthaler, Herzog & de Meuron's partner in charge of the project. 'We took the classic Long Island artist's studio, with a house shape and skylights, as a model for the museum building.'
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