In 1968, more than 200 contributors, Huntington High School students among them, put their money together so the Heckscher Museum of Art could buy a painting. The painting was Eclipse of the Sun, George Grosz made it in 1926, and this fall it turns 100 years old on the wall of the Huntington museum that has built an entire exhibition, and a centennial year, around it.

Eclipse of the Sun Now opened September 26 and runs through May 9, 2027, pairing the Grosz canvas with more than 50 works of socially engaged art drawn from the Heckscher's own collection and from the Art Bridges Foundation. The museum, in Huntington's Heckscher Park, is open Thursday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.

The painter who landed in Huntington

Grosz painted Eclipse of the Sun in Berlin in 1926 as a pointed look at power, greed and corruption, and it became one of the signature images of his career. He was a leading figure of the Berlin Dada movement, and in 1933 he left Germany for the United States as the Nazi party took power.

The second half of his story belongs to Long Island. From 1947 until shortly before his death in 1959, Grosz lived and worked in Huntington, teaching and painting a few minutes from the museum that would later anchor his legacy here.

A rediscovery and a community purchase

After Grosz died, the painting dropped out of view for nearly a decade. In 1967 it resurfaced when it was brought to Eva Gatling, then the Heckscher's director, for an appraisal. Gatling recognized what was in front of her and launched a community campaign to acquire it for Huntington.

The campaign drew more than 200 contributors, a list that ran from Huntington High School students to Governor Nelson Rockefeller. In 1968 Eclipse of the Sun became the first work ever purchased for the Heckscher's collection, which until then had been built on gifts. A town bought a masterwork the way a town buys a firetruck, by passing the hat, and the receipt has the students' names on it.

The show built around it

For the centennial, chief curator Karli Wurzelbacher and consulting curator of contemporary art Meredith A. Brown have surrounded the 1926 canvas with work by artists of the decades since, organized around the questions Grosz was asking: war, immigration, civil rights, mass media and the environment. The pairing makes the case that the painting's subjects did not stay in 1926, and it puts the Heckscher's signature work in conversation with the museum's newest loans.

The museum has scheduled centennial programs, events and celebrations across the anniversary year, with the running list posted to its Grosz centennial page.

If you go

Eclipse of the Sun Now runs through May 9, 2027 at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Heckscher Park, Huntington. Hours are Thursday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.; admission details and the centennial program calendar are at heckscher.org.

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