Three Exhibitions, One Season
From November 21, 2026, through March 7, 2027, the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn Harbor opens three exhibitions at once: NYC Glam: The 60s – 80s, Harry Benson: New York Nightlife, 60s – 80s and Louis Comfort Tiffany: Orientalism. Two of them return to the decades when Manhattan’s nightlife became a laboratory for art, fashion and music. The third steps back to the Gilded Age and one of its most versatile artists, seen here as a painter.
Together they make a strong case for a winter trip to Long Island’s North Shore, where the museum occupies the former Frick family mansion on a 145-acre estate.
NYC Glam: The Party as a Work of Art
The centerpiece is NYC Glam, which follows New York’s cultural life from Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball in 1966 through the era of Studio 54 and beyond. Its premise is that this was more than a social scene. It was a distinctly American creative phenomenon, in which painters, designers, writers, musicians and photographers fed one another’s work.
The roster is vast. The artists include Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Larry Rivers, Alex Katz and Malcolm Morley. Fashion arrives through Halston, Diana Vreeland, André Leon Talley, Diane von Fürstenberg, Stephen Sprouse and Paloma Picasso. Behind the camera are Richard Avedon, Ron Galella, Slim Aarons, Peter Beard and the filmmakers Albert and David Maysles. The writers range from Capote and Gore Vidal to Philip Roth, Joseph Heller and Neil Simon, alongside Interview magazine. The soundtrack runs from David Bowie and Patti Smith to Deborah Harry, Iggy Pop, Talking Heads, the Ramones and the Sex Pistols.
Chief Curator Franklin Hill Perrell says the images together give the era “the mood of an unending party.”
Rooms That Become Scenes
What sets the show apart is its staging. Instead of hanging works on neutral walls, the museum turns the mansion’s grand rooms into immersive sets that combine art, clothing, furniture, photography and design, each recreating the atmosphere of a celebrated New York moment.
The press images hint at the range. Robert Mapplethorpe’s 1978 portrait of Deborah Harry is pure downtown cool. Warhol’s 1977 Polaroid of Liza Minnelli captures uptown celebrity. Richard Bernstein’s airbrushed portraits of Cher and Isabella Rossellini recall the pop gloss of the period’s magazine covers. And Judith Leiber’s 1980 Tiffany-inspired crystal minaudière, a jeweled evening bag, quietly links the glamour of the 1980s to the Tiffany paintings elsewhere in the museum.
Harry Benson’s Front-Row Seat
The second exhibition offers an eyewitness account of the same years. Harry Benson CBE, born in 1929, has spent six decades photographing history as it happened. He was the exclusive photographer on the Beatles’ 1964 tour and has captured presidents, royalty and countless stars of popular culture.
This show concentrates on his New York nightlife work from the 1960s to the 1980s, including the Black and White Ball and the scene at Studio 54. Associate Curator Alex Maccaro points to images of Jacqueline Kennedy peering out of a limousine and an intimate portrait of Bianca Jagger with Andy Warhol, calling the photographs “a slice of social history.” Seen alongside NYC Glam, Benson’s pictures feel like the evidence behind the legend.
Tiffany Beyond the Lamp
The third exhibition changes century and register. Louis Comfort Tiffany: Orientalism brings together 20 paintings from the museum’s collection, which the museum describes as the largest group of Tiffany’s Orientalist paintings anywhere. Best known for stained glass and lamps, Tiffany was also a committed painter. Against the backdrop of 19th-century Egyptomania and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, he traveled widely in North Africa and West Asia and painted what he saw.
The timing is apt. The show complements two exhibitions now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Orientalism: Between Fact and Fantasy and Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany. The Met’s title names the tension that today’s viewers will bring to these canvases: the line between observation and Western imagination.
It is also the first in a new series in the newly named Louis Comfort Tiffany Gallery. Executive Director Beth Horn explains that future installments will draw out themes from the collection and show Tiffany from fresh angles, starting with links to Glorious Gardens (March 20 – July 11, 2027).
Plan Your Visit
NYC Glam: The 60s – 80s, Harry Benson: New York Nightlife, 60s – 80s and Louis Comfort Tiffany: Orientalism are on view November 21, 2026 – March 7, 2027, at the Nassau County Museum of Art, One Museum Drive (off Northern Boulevard), Roslyn Harbor, NY 11576.
Open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Admission is $15 for adults, $10 for seniors (65+) and $5 for students and children (4 to 12). Docent-led exhibition tours run daily at 2 p.m., and mansion tours every Saturday at 1 p.m., both free with admission. Entry to the grounds, including a sculpture garden with 44 works, is free. Information: nassaumuseum.org · (516) 484-9338.
