Arts-In-Education Exploratory Enrichment

Professional Development Superintendents Day Conference, ov. 4, 2025

Presented by Heckscher Museum Of Art

K-12 teachers are invited to join us for this full day of interactive and collaborative art discussions and activities designed to inspire, invigorate, and broaden art-making techniques and perspectives! Enjoy museum curator-led tours of the exhibition Eclipse of the Sun Now. One hundred years ago, George Grosz created Eclipse of the Sun, a masterpiece of political art and one of the most significant paintings in the Heckscher Museum’s Collection. To amplify its enduring message, this museum-wide exhibition explores politically engaged art created over the last century featuring more than fifty works by leading artists of our time. Meet, learn, and create with two inspiring contemporary artists, Courtney M. Leonard and Sherry Davis. At the Museum, Courtney M. Leonard, multimedia artist and filmmaker from the Shinnecock Nation in Long Island, New York, will share an inspiring presentation of her work. In 2023, The Heckscher Museum commissioned Leonard to create CONTACT 2,023… which debuted in her retrospective exhibition at the Museum. This remarkable artwork will now be featured in the exhibition Eclipse of the Sun Now. Leonard’s powerful artwork engages with Long Island’s colonial history, celebrates Indigenous knowledge and resilience, and addresses urgent ecological issues. She explores and documents historical ties to water, whale, and material sustainability. At Old First Church, Sherry Davis, a mixed-media sculptor known for monumental, site-responsive installations that transform reclaimed materials into explorations of place, memory, labor, community, and renewal, will share more about her process. Grounded in fiber techniques, her practice is shaped by the belief that materials carry stories and that meaning emerges through the relationship among object, site, and viewer. Her installations are developed in dialogue with landscape, local history, architecture, and community, making the site an active element of each work.