Guild Hall opens its 86th Artist Members Exhibition on Sunday, November 8, filling the East Hampton museum with work by more than 300 local artists through January 10. Hanging alongside it is a solo exhibition, Michael A. Butler: Somewhere in Time, the prize the Sag Harbor painter earned by taking Top Honors at the 85th edition.

A show any member can hang in

The Artist Members Exhibition is one of the few non-juried museum shows still running: no panel decides who gets in. Any Guild Hall artist member may enter, which is how the walls end up holding several hundred works by East End painters, sculptors, photographers and mixed-media artists in a single hang.

Guild Hall established the members show 85 years ago, and the open format has survived while juried selection became the norm nearly everywhere else.

The winner's year

The show is non-juried at the door, but an awards juror picks winners off the walls, and the Top Honors award carries a real stake: a future solo exhibition at the museum. At the 85th exhibition, awards juror Storm Ascher, the founder of Superposition Gallery and The Hamptons Black Arts Council, gave Top Honors to Michael A. Butler of Sag Harbor for a painting titled Lilies of the Field.

Butler is a self-taught artist who has been painting since the 1970s, working mainly in acrylic in a style he calls narrative folk art, much of it drawn from East End history. Somewhere in Time, the solo show that award produced, opens the same day as the 86th members exhibition and runs on the same calendar, through January 10.

Around the galleries

Before the November hang, Guild Hall closes October with a run of one-night programs: a National Theatre Live screening of Frankenstein on October 23, a family day on October 24, and a Halloween silent disco dance party on October 30.

If you go

The 86th Artist Members Exhibition and Michael A. Butler: Somewhere in Time run November 8, 2026 through January 10, 2027 at Guild Hall, 158 Main Street, East Hampton. The museum is open Thursday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. Admission is $12, $10 for seniors 65 and over, and free for members, children and students. Entry details for artist members are on Guild Hall's site.

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