“Friday Nights Live!” Series To Cover Painter Fairfield Porter And Poet John Ashbery

The Parrish Art Museum’s Friday Nights Live! series will continue on Friday, October 30 with a special talk related to the exhibition Housebound: Fairfield Porter and his Circle of Poets and Painters. The evening will feature Alicia G. Longwell, Ph.D., The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Chief Curator, in conversation with Karin Roffman, author of The Songs We Know Best: John Ashbery’s Early Life, a biography of poet John Ashbery – a dear friend of the Porter’s and frequent visitor of the family’s Southampton abode. The virtual discussion will commence at 5:00 p.m.

“I’m delighted that Karin Roffman will join me for this conversation about painters and poets and the ways in which their domestic surroundings can both nurture and reflect their artistic choices,” said Longwell. “Her deep knowledge of Ashbery’s life and work, including his enduring friendship with Porter, will be the focus of this illuminating talk.”

Fairfield, along with his wife, poet Anne Porter, and their children, moved to a 19th-c. captain’s house in Southampton Village in 1949. For the next 30 years, the couple welcomed many guests for a weekend or an extended trip, which was often documented by the notable names in words and paint. Visitors included Ashbery, poets Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, and James Schuyler; as well as painters including Robert Dash, Jane Freilicher, Alex Katz, Larry Rivers, and Jane Wilson.

Housebound encompasses nearly 40 paintings by Porter, Dash, Freilicher, Katz, and Rivers, as well as poems by Porter, Ashbery, Barbara Guest, Koch, O’Hara, and Schuyler.

For more information, visit parrishart.org.