East End Seaport Museum kicks off season with new exhibitions

The East End Seaport Museum is having a season reopening celebration on Friday, May 22, with new exhibitions and reimagined permanent galleries.

At the heart of the season is BREACH: Logbook 26 | CONVERGENCE, by nationally recognized Shinnecock artist Courtney Leonard, who has been developing it as an ongoing body of work since 2014.

The title draws on the word’s layered meanings: a whale rising through the surface, the legal failure to honor an agreement, the gap in a wall. Working across ceramics, video, and installation, each “logbook” in the series documents the relationship between Indigenous communities and the waters they depend on.

“This chapter, CONVERGENCE, arrives on local ground — engaging directly with Greenport, the Peconic River, and Gardiner’s Bay to ask what it means for cultures, waters, and histories to meet in a single place,” the museum said. “Site-specific video, ceramics, and hanging works are installed in dialogue with the museum’s historic Fresnel lens collection, asking new questions of both the space and its visitors.”

The museum’s main gallery features Stories from Our Working Waterfront by Paul Kreiling. The museum said a floor-to-ceiling map of the East End anchors the exhibition, layered with micro-histories drawn from deep local knowledge of the region’s maritime past and present.

“The museum’s celebrated Fresnel lens collection — long considered one of its great treasures — receives its most comprehensive presentation to date, with new displays and original research illuminating each piece,” the museum said.

The museum also has a new Children’s Discovery Area, called All Hands on Deck. Visitors can explore the sea through microscopes, interactive touchscreens, a restored boat helm and a rope-and-knot station.

This year’s recipients of the museum’s Lifeguard Scholarship — Isabella Sarbia, Edgard Choquin, and Hannah Gebbia — will also be recognized. The scholarship supports the next generation of waterfront stewards in the East End community.

Museum members can get an exclusive first look on Friday from 5 to 6 p.m. The opening reception will be open to the public from 6 to 8 p.m.