Long Island's Best: Young Artists at the Heckscher
2007 Exhibit

Welcome to the eleventh annual Long Island’s Best: Young Artists at the Heckscher student exhibition.  This two-week long exhibition of works by outstanding high school art students from throughout Long Island is the culmination of an exciting annual Arts-in-Education Initiative developed to encourage the use of the Museum as a rich resource in high school students lives.

The Heckscher Museum of Art is dedicated to enriching the lives of students through making dynamic connections between works of art and valuable hands-on learning experiences.  Our insightful School Discovery Program engages over 7,000 students from schools throughout Long Island each school year.

The Museum invites ninth through twelfth grade art students from every school district throughout Nassau and Suffolk counties, as well as private and parochial schools, to participate in Long Island’s Best annually.  Schools are offered the option of attending one of our renowned School Discovery Programs (a two-hour long in-depth gallery tour, discussion, and hands-on art-making experience), sending students to the Museum on their own, or both.  During these Museum visits, students are encouraged to make connections between the artwork on view and their own creative processes.  In addition to their original works of art inspired by the Museum’s exhibitions, each participating student writes an artist’s statement explaining the connection between his or her original artwork and source(s) of inspiration at the Heckscher.  Our Chief Curator, Dr. Kenneth Wayne juried this highly competitive exhibition.

This year, 44 high schools participated in Long Island’s Best, including 18 schools from Suffolk County and 26 schools from Nassau County.  Overall, there were more than 280 student entries received with 75 selected for display in this year’s exhibition.  Congratulations to all of the participants in this year’s Long Island’s Best: Young Artists at the Heckscher for their commitment, dedication, creativity and talent!

Finding Inspiration…
The works of art in this year’s Long Island’s Best exhibition were inspired by the following exhibitions on view at the Museum between September 2006 and March 2007:  (To learn more, please see the “Finding Inspiration” wall texts posted throughout the galleries.)