The Nassau County Museum of Art Runs on Two Calendars, and the Free One Never Changes

Out on the grounds at One Museum Drive in Roslyn Harbor are Mark di Suvero's ONE OKLOCK, Tom Otterness's FREE MONEY and two totems by Marko Remec. You can see all of them without a ticket, and none of them changes when the galleries do.

The mansion galleries do change. Louis Comfort Tiffany: Artist of the Gilded Age closed on November 8. Three new exhibitions open on Saturday, November 21, and run through March 7, 2027.

The two sides of the museum keep different hours, cost different amounts and follow different schedules. For a Roslyn household, the 145 acres are the part to use all year. The exhibitions are the reason to go back a few times each season.

Two schedules at one address

The museum lists separate hours and prices for its outdoor and indoor spaces. Side by side, they look like this:

The museum's visit page lists the grounds as open every day of the week. The mansion is closed on Mondays. The grounds have no ticket window and free parking, so you can walk there on a weekday morning, on a Monday or in the last hour before a November sunset. The galleries are the part that needs planning.

What the 145 acres hold right now

The museum describes its preserve as 145 acres with more than 40 outdoor sculptures by 30 sculptors. The works are set among fields, woods, ponds and formal gardens. The NCMA Outdoors page currently features these works:

• Joel Perlman, DREADNOUGHT
• Marko Remec, NYET (WALL TOTEM) and WOULD THAT I WISH FOR (TALL TOTEM)
• Mark di Suvero, ONE OKLOCK
• Tom Otterness, FREE MONEY
• Alejandro Colunga, SILLA CASA PARA PALOMAS and STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN
• Allen Bertoldi, WOOD DUCK, RED BANK 31 – NASSAU VARIATION, 1-2-3, HOMAGE TO NOGUCHI and SHELTER

The museum's sculpture map notes that works are added, moved and removed often. Each walk can turn up something new, so check the map at the start.

The trail system is the bigger draw. The museum lists nine marked trails covering more than six miles and calls the Tulip Tree trail one of the longest. Its trail-sponsorship program names the Pinetum, Jerusha Dewey, Tulip Tree, Clayton Trellis, Hempstead Harbor Overlook, Twin Pond, Ravine and Mountain Laurel trails.

Near the house is the formal garden, laid out by Marian Cruger Coffin in the 1920s for the Frick family. It has a privet arch, brick paths, a circular reflecting pool and fountain, four garden rooms, boxwood scrolls, roses and perennials, an azalea garden and a teak trellis. The brick path from the house to the garden is lined with specimen trees that Childs Frick collected and planted. The arboretum's labeled trees include a Japanese torreya. At the Manes Art Education Center, a butterfly garden and milkweed beds are planted to support pollinators and monarchs.

One rule to know before you leave the house: the grounds allow no pets except credentialed service animals. Pet dogs are not allowed, even on a leash.

What opens in the mansion on November 21

All three new exhibitions run from November 21, 2026, through March 7, 2027. Taken together, they reach well beyond Long Island.

Harry Benson: New York Nightlife, 60s–80s gathers Benson's photographs of the city after dark, including Truman Capote's 1966 Black and White Ball and Studio 54. Among the images the museum highlights are Jacqueline Kennedy in a limousine and Bianca Jagger with Andy Warhol.

NYC Glam: The 60s–80s covers the same decades through art, fashion, writing, music, photography and nightlife. The museum is staging it as immersive installations in the mansion's rooms, along with a recreation of Vito Giallo Antiques. Works shown on the exhibition page include Robert Mapplethorpe's Deborah Harry from 1978, Richard Bernstein's celebrity portraits and Judith Leiber bags from the Leiber collection. New York Art Life reported that Franklin Hill Perrell is chief curator of NYC Glam and Alex Maccaro is associate curator of the Benson show. The outlet also listed a Warhol Polaroid of Liza Minnelli among the works.

The third show has the closest tie to Roslyn Harbor. Louis Comfort Tiffany: Orientalism brings together 20 Tiffany paintings from the museum's own collection. It opens the newly named Louis Comfort Tiffany Gallery, which the museum plans to use for an ongoing series drawn from its holdings. The museum explains why it can sustain that series:

"NCMA holds the largest and most extensive collection of Tiffany's paintings in the Orientalist style, perhaps his most distinctive mode as a painter."

The museum says the show complements two exhibitions now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Orientalism: Between Fact and Fantasy and Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany. Roslyn residents can see the companion collection a short drive from home.

Fitting the two calendars together through December

The paid programs this season are held at the Manes Art Education Center or in the mansion, on the same grounds as the free trails, so you can add time outdoors to any of them. In date order:

1. Saturday, November 21. The three exhibitions open. On any gallery day, exhibition tours start at 2 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday and are free with admission.
2. Sunday, November 22. The Watercolor Winter Wreath Workshop runs from noon to 2:30 p.m. for adults 16 and older. It costs $81 for members and $90 for nonmembers, includes museum admission, and requires preregistration.
3. Thursday, November 26. The museum buildings are closed for Thanksgiving Day.
4. Friday, December 4. Nuno-Felting: Winter Pines starts at 10 a.m. at the Manes Art Education Center, with a nonmember fee of $90.
5. Saturday, December 5. Storybook Studio runs from 10 to 11 a.m. for children ages 4 to 7 with a caregiver. It costs $20 for members or $25 for nonmembers for one adult and one child, plus $5 for each additional child.

December 5 and 6 is also the first full weekend of the month. On those weekends, the museum's posted policy gives Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and U.S. Trust cardholders one free general admission with a photo ID. Guests of cardholders are not included. A family could do Storybook Studio at 10 a.m., walk part of a trail before lunch and visit the galleries once they open at 11.

For lunch, the museum lists café hours of Thursday through Sunday, noon to 4 p.m., with indoor and outdoor seating. The museum store in the mansion keeps gallery days, Tuesday through Sunday until 4:30 p.m.

Where the Tiffany series goes next

The new Tiffany Gallery is designed to link the two calendars. The museum says its rotating Tiffany shows will often reflect themes from upcoming exhibitions, and the next one it names is Glorious Gardens, running March 20 to July 11, 2027. That spring show will be about gardens, on a property that has its own 1920s Coffin formal garden, an arboretum and a pinetum trail. If you walk the grounds this winter, you'll already know the setting when the galleries take up the same subject.

The NYC Glam rooms will show how a mansion interior can be restyled to tell a story about a decade. As someone with an interior design background, I'll be curious to see which pieces carry each room. If the exhibit gets you thinking about rooms of your own, in Roslyn or elsewhere on the North Shore, Nancy Rosen would be glad to talk through it with you. Let's Connect.