As a fundraising event for the New York Art Libraries Society, a small group was welcomed into the Watermill Center on Long Island for a tour of its buildings and grounds. Special thanks go to Deb Verhoff, Librarian, and Clifford Allen, Archivist, who gave up their Saturday to lead the tour.
The Watermill Center is an interdisciplinary laboratory for the arts and humanities completed in 2006 on the Long Island, NY site of a former Western Union communication research facility. Founded by theatre and visual artist Robert Wilson as a place for young and emerging artists to work, learn, create, and grow with each other, Watermill integrates performing arts practice with resources from the humanities, research from the sciences, and inspiration from the visual arts.
Watermill is unique within the global landscape of experimental theatrical performance, and regularly convenes the brightest minds from all disciplines to do, in Wilson’s words, ‘what no one else is doing.’
The Center itself is a 20,000+ square foot flexible working space including a 6,000 volume research library, galleries, rehearsal and staging spaces, workshops, offices, and residences situated on six acres of artist-designed and landscaped grounds. A collection of over 8,000 art and artifact pieces spans the history of humankind is integrated into all aspects of the building and grounds as a reminder that the history of each civilization is told by its artists.
For more information about the Watermill Center: http://www.watermillcenter.org/
