The Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington opens its ninth Long Island Biennial on May 16, with the exhibition running through September 13, 2026. This iteration, titled Just Powers, brings together 73 works by 69 artists from Nassau and Suffolk counties, selected from nearly 600 open-call submissions.
The exhibition is organized around two historical touchstones separated by 150 years. The first is the Declaration of Independence, whose articulation of liberty and equality the exhibition treats as aspirational rather than settled — principles that have never fully matched their promise. The second is George Grosz’s 1926 painting Eclipse of the Sun, a work of political art that exposed what Grosz saw as the rot inside modern society’s institutions. Taken together, these two reference points frame the central question the exhibition asks of its artists: how are democratic ideals interpreted, challenged, and reimagined now?
The exhibition is organized around two historical touchstones separated by 150 years. The first is the Declaration of Independence, whose articulation of liberty and equality the exhibition treats as aspirational rather than settled — principles that have never fully matched their promise. The second is George Grosz’s 1926 painting Eclipse of the Sun, a work of political art that exposed what Grosz saw as the rot inside modern society’s institutions. Taken together, these two reference points frame the central question the exhibition asks of its artists: how are democratic ideals interpreted, challenged, and reimagined now?
