Event Details
The Church is back! Stop in during our opening reception, any time between 6 PM – 7:30 PM on January 17th to get the first look of our 2026 Winter Exhibition Martha Graham: Collaborations.Coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the founding of Martha Graham Dance Company – The Church’s first ever artists in residence – the exhibition examines the company’s history through the lens of its artistic partnerships. These collaborations generated groundbreaking innovations in dance, sculpture, stage design, lighting, and musical composition.
A multi-media exhibition curated by Oliver Tobin, a former dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company and former Director of Martha Graham Resources, the exhibition examines how the collaborations generated groundbreaking innovations in dance, sculpture, stage design lighting and musical composition.
The exhibition features original sets by Isamu Noguchi; costumes by Donna Karan, Halston, and Graham herself; audio and visual presentations highlighting the contributions of composer Aaron Copland and lighting designer Jean Rosenthal; and performance and interview footage with generations of dancers. Archival photographs, texts, and films further illuminate this distinguished history. The exhibition explores the “performance of living” embodied in Graham’s work through the stories, forms, and creative achievements that emerged from her tenacious vision and the remarkable artists who shaped it alongside her.
The exhibition is curated by Oliver Tobin, commissioned expressly for The Church from a concept by Sheri L. Pasquarella. The exhibition design is itself a collaboration among Tobin, Pasquarella, and Joe Jagos, Exhibition Coordinator at The Church, with contributions from graphic designers Virginia Edwards and Maria Lavazzo.
Oliver Tobin states: “This exhibition celebrates Martha Graham’s legacy as a profoundly influential and collaborative force—an artist whose work was shaped and sustained by the dancers who embodied her ideas and the composers, designers, and thinkers who elevated and inspired her. Their shared authorship forged a modern language that remains vital across generations and continues to reverberate a century later.”
ABOUT THE CHURCH The Church was established in 2019 by artists Eric Fischl and April Gornik. Housed in a deconsecrated 19th-century church, its doors were opened in April 2021. Our mission is to foster creativity and to honor the living history of Sag Harbor as a maker village. The East End represents an exceptional artistic legacy, spanning the practices of indigenous art of several centuries ago, Abstract Expressionists of the mid-20th Century, and the many celebrated writers, makers, musicians, and visual artists of the recent past and current moment. Core programming includes visual art exhibitions, concerts and events, educational programming, workshops, lectures, and an artist’s residency.