Discover a Stunning Sculpture Exhibition in the Gardens of Southampton Arts Center
Large-scale outdoor masterpieces by the likes of Kiki Smith, Richard Hudson, and Rachel Lee Hovnanian transform the grounds of the new Paulson Family Gardens, on view through October 14
Artist Isamu Noguchi once described a sculpture garden “not as sites with objects but as relationships to a whole.” It is a fitting way to portray “Contained Movement,” a contemporary sculpture exhibition in the Southampton Arts Center’s newly renovated Paulson Family Gardens, a recent gift from John Paulson. “It was so exciting to explore our new garden and find the exact, proper placements for these truly amazing works of art,” says Christina Strassfield, SAC executive director. “Strassfield says. “They fit in nature and enhance the natural beauty around them.”
The idea took shape as the garden itself was being imagined. Christine Mack, collector and founder of the Mack Art Foundation—a Brooklyn-based nonprofit that provides artists from outside New York housing, studio space, and mentorships—curated the exhibition, alongside art dealer Leila Heller, SAC Board Chairman Simone Levinson, and Strassfield. “This exhibition feels like a meaningful way to invite people to the Paulson Garden,” says Mack.
The works themselves, on loan from Leila Heller Gallery and Room 57 Gallery, move across a wide material register including mirrored steel, painted aluminum, bronze, ceramic, and fiberglass brought together under a single, spare premise: sculpture as a held breath, a pause between stillness and motion. Kiki Smith’s Big Girl in bronze figure stands sentinel before the building itself while nearby Richard Hudson’s white Marble Envelope of polished curves throw the sky back at itself; John Clement bends steel into gestures that read as arrested velocity; Mia Fonssagrives Solow, Katya Emelyanova, Anton Bakker, and Arthur Carter each contribute their own answer to the exhibition’s central tension form caught mid-transformation, energy made to hold still. Emerging artist Leo Orta’s bronze bench, Bones, Skin and Contour, rounds out the show.
Rachel Lee Hovnanian’s Armor, a series of nine larger-than-life bronze women’s bathing suits, points to the constraining pressures placed on women to fit into unrealistic standards of beauty while also suggesting the inherent strength of women and the female form. “We all wear armor,” Hovnanian, who recently had a one-woman show at the Baltimore Museum of Art, says. “Some of it is inherited, some of it earned, and some of it we no longer realize we are carrying. This work invites viewers to ask themselves: does the armor I wear still protect me, or is it simply part of who I’ve become?”
“None of the works are fragile or forbidding,” adds Mack, whose own collection was the subject of the center’s 2026 exhibition, “Beyond the Present.” We want people to interact with the art, not just look at it.”
“Contained Movement” runs through October 14 at the Southampton Arts Center in Southampton, New York.