Roslyn Harbor, One Museum Drive (just off Northern Boulevard, Route 25A, two traffic lights west of Glen Cove Rd.)
516-484-9337
Open: Tuesday - Sunday, 11 a.m. – 4:45 p.m.
Admission: $4 (children) - $10 (adults).

Ranked among the nation’s most important suburban art museums, the Nassau County Museum of Art (NCMA) is located on the former Frick Estate, a spectacular 145-acre property in the heart of Long Island’s fabled North Shore, above Roslyn Harbor. The museum building, named in 2004 in honor of art collectors and philanthropists Arnold and Joan Saltzman, is a three-story Georgian mansion that exemplifies the Gold Coast architecture of the late 19th century. In addition to the mansion, NCMA includes the Tee Ridder Miniatures Museum, the Outdoor Sculpture Garden, the Formal Garden, the pinetum and the Art Studio, where extensive classes are held for adults and children. Click here for Long Island Museum of Art Website.
            

Once administered by Nassau County’s Office of Cultural Development, NCMA became a private not-for-profit institution in 1989 and is now governed and funded by a private board of trustees that includes many of Long Island’s most prominent business, civic and social leaders.

EXHIBITIONS. NCMA annually presents four major new exhibitions, each of which are original to the Museum and are organized by the Museum’s own curatorial staff. Always adventurous in scope, NCMA exhibitions have reached across a broad spectrum of artistic concerns — from European and American art movements ("Surrealism," September 2000; "La Belle Epoque," June 2003; and "Picasso," February 2005); to epochs of American history ("Window on the West," February 2002; "The WPA Era," August 2004; and "The American Spirit: Paintings by Mort Künstler," August 2006); to the influences of one art form on another ("Dance, Dance, Dance," June 2000, and "Explosive Photography/Photorealism," January 2004); to the impact of Long Island artists on contemporary art ("The Hamptons Since Pollock," April 2000); and the influence of a dynamic world leader on the arts ("Napoleon And His Age," January 2001). In addition to these major exhibition, NCMA mounts smaller original exhibitions in the second floor galleries and regularly showcases work by some of today’s most intriguing artists in the Contemporary Gallery.

PERMANENT COLLECTION. NCMA’s collection of more than 600 art objects spans American and European art of the 19th and 20th centuries. Encompassing all types of media, the collection includes works by Rodin, Braque, Vuillard, Bonnard, Lichtenstein, Rivers, Rauschenberg, Chaim Gross, Moses Soyer, Audrey Flack, George Segal and Alex Katz, among many others. Particularly notable are the museum’s holdings of works by Latin American artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Represented in this collection are Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta, Fernando Botero, Alejandro Colunga, Luiz Cruz Azeceta, Arnaldo Roche-Rabell and Efrain Almeida.
 

SCULPTURE PARK. The 145 acres of the former Frick Estate, part of the Nassau County Department of Parks' extensive portfolio of preserve properties, constitute one of the largest publicly accessible sculpture gardens on the East Coast. Among the more than 50 sculptures on the property, placed to interact with the natural environment, are works by Lichtenstein, Calder, Botero, Tom Otterness, Rodin, Chaim Gross, Smith, Nagare, Barnett Newman, Richard Serra and others.

EDUCATION. Accredited by the New York State Board of Regents as a museum and educational institution, NCMA serves more than 18,000 Long Island school children and their teachers who visit the museum each year for exhibition tours and art-related activities. The Education Department also sponsors extensive art studio workshops for children and adults at all artistic skill levels. In addition, it provides individual school lectures, teacher training programs, and Saturday morning programs integrating art and performance. NCMA’s professional staff is augmented by more than 200 volunteers and 90 docents who provide informative exhibition tours for the public.

TEE RIDDER MINIATURE MUSEUM. Founded in 1995, Tee Ridder is one of the nation’s few museums devoted to the whimsy and elegance of miniature rooms and objects. It was named for Madeleine “Tee” Ridder (1926-91), a prominent patron and creator of miniature arts. It is currently undergoing a major reorganization that will result in more family-friendly activities while it continues to serve the interests and needs of miniaturist artists.  

FORMAL GARDENS. Commissioned in 1925 by Frances Frick, an avid horticulturist and garden club member, the Frick Estate’s Formal Gardens have been restored to the original design of the famed landscape architect, Marian Cruger Coffin. Coffin considered these gardens to be among her finest creations.

HISTORY. In 1919, Henry Clay Frick, the co-founder of U.S. Steel, purchased the property once owned by the poet and preservationist, William Cullen Bryant, for his son, Childs Frick. Architect Sir Charles Carrick Allow was commissioned to redesign the facade and much of the interior of the home, which was named Clayton. The younger Frick and his wife Frances lived at Clayton for almost 50 years. Following Childs Frick’s death in 1965, the estate was purchased by Nassau County, which then converted it to a museum, called the Nassau County Museum of Art.